NIGHTS 

ROME    VENICE    LONDON    PARIS 


SECOND  EDITION 


LIFE  OF 
JAMES  McNEILL  WHISTLER 

BY  ELIZABETH  ROBINS  PENNELL 
AND  JOSEPH  PENNELL 

THOROUGHLY  REVISED.  FIFTH  EDITION 

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Painting  by  J.  McLure  Hamilton 


N  :G:     ' 


ROME         *         VENICE 

IN    THE    AESTHETIC    EIGHTIES 


LONDON         *        PARIS 

IN    THE    FIGHTING    NINETIES 


ELIZABETH  ROBINS  PENNELL 


WITH  SIXTEEN  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LONDON 
J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

MCMXVI 


COPYRIGHT,   1916,   BY  J.   B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 


PUBLISHED  MARCH, 


PRINTED   BY  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

AT  THE  WASHINGTON  SQUARE  PRESS 

PHILADELPHIA,  U.  S.  A. 


PS2 


PREFACE 


I 


P^"~~B — ^HERE  are  times  when  we  recall  old 
memories  much  as  we  take  down  old 
favourites  from  our  bookshelves,  just 
to  see  how  they  have  worn,  how  they 
have  stood  the  test  of  years.  Sometimes  the 
books  have  worn  so  well  that  we  cannot  put  them 
away  until  we  have  read  every  word  to  the  very 
last  again,  we  have  not  done  with  the  memories 
until  we  have  lived  again  through  every  moment 
of  the  past  to  which  they  belong.  It  is  in  this 
spirit  that  I  brought  my  Nights  of  long  ago  to 
the  test,  and,  finding  that  for  me  they  stand  it 
triumphantly  and  are  still  as  vivid  and  vocifer 
ous  and  full  of  life  as  they  were  of  old,  I  have  not 
had  the  courage  to  loose  my  hold  upon  them  and 
let  them  drift  back  once  more  into  unfriendly 
silence. 

It  contributes  to  my  pleasure  in  this  revival  of 
my  Nights,  that  I  have  been  helped  in  many  ways 
to  give  more  substantial  form  to  the  familiar 
ghosts  who  wander  through  them.  My  debt  of 
gratitude  is  great.  Mr.  William  Nicholson  has 
been  willing  for  me  to  use  his  portrait  of  Henley 
and  from  Mrs.  Henley  I  have  the  bust  by  Rodin. 
Mr.  Frederick  H.  Evans  has  lent  me  the  very  in 
teresting  photograph  he  made  of  Beardsley,  to 

5 


834102 


PREFACE 

whom  he  was  so  good  a  friend,  and  to  Mr.  John 
Lane,  the  publisher  of  the  Yellow  Book,  I  owe 
Beardsley's  sketch  of  Harland.  To  Mr.  John 
Ross  I  am  indebted  for  the  drawing  of  Phil  May 
by  himself  never  before  published,  to  the  Hough- 
ton  Mifflin  Company  for  the  portrait  of  Vedder, 
to  Mr.  Duveneck  for  the  painting  of  himself  by 
Mr.  Joseph  de  Camp.  The  photograph  of  Iwan- 
Miiller  and  George  W.  Steevens  reminds  me  of 
the  day  so  long  since  when  I  went  with  them  and 
Mrs.  Steevens  to  Mr.  Frederick  Hollyer's  and  we 
were  all  photographed  in  turn,  so  that  this  record 
of  the  visit  seems  surely  mine  by  right.  It  was 
Mr.  Hollyer,  too,  who  photographed  the  fine  por 
trait  "Bob"  Stevenson  painted  of  himself,  and  it 
was  Mrs.  Stevenson  who  gave  me  my  copy  of  it. 
I  have  Mr.  J.  McLure  Hamilton's  permission  to 
publish  his  portrait  of  J — ,  while  J —  has  been  so 
generous  with  his  prints,  portraits  of  old  back 
grounds  of  the  Nights,  that  I  can  add  this  book 
to  the  many  in  which  I  have  profited  by  his  col 
laboration.  I  have  also  to  thank  the  Editor  of 
the  Atlantic  Monthly,  in  which  my  Nights  in 
Rome  and  in  Venice  first  appeared,  for  his  con 
sent  to  their  re-publication  now  in  book  form. 
ELIZABETH  ROBINS  PENNELL 

3.  Adelphi  Terrace  House,  London 
December  25,  1915 


CONTENTS 

I.  DAYS:  A  WORD  TO  EXPLAIN 11 

II.  NIGHTS:  IN  ROME 37 

III.  NIGHTS:  IN  VENICE 71 

IV.  NIGHTS:  IN  LONDON 115 

V.  NIGHTS:  IN  PARIS..  .  225 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


" 


PAGE 

Frontispiece 

From  the  Painting  by  J.  McLure  Hamilton 

OLD  AND  NEW  ROME 35 

From  the  Etching  by  Joseph  Pennell 
ELIHU  VEDDER 55 

FRANK  DUVENECK 75 

From  the  Painting  by  Joseph  R.  DeCamp 

THE  CAFE  ORIENTALS,  VENICE 82 

From  the  Etching  by  Joseph  Pennell 

OUT  OF  OUR  LONDON  WINDOWS 122 

From  the  Mezzotint  by  Joseph  Pennell 
W.  E.  HENLEY 125 

From  the  Bust  by  Auguste  Rodin. 
W.  E.  HENLEY 127 

From  the  Painting  by  William  Nicholson 
IWAN-MtJLLER  AND   GEORGE    W.  STEEVENS 154 

From  a  Photograph  by  Frederick  Hollyer 
"  BOB  "  STEVENSON . . .  160 

From  the  Painting  by  Himself 
HENRY  HARLAND 172 

From  the  Drawing  by  Aubrey  Beardsley 
AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 178 

From  the  Photograph  by  Frederick  H.  Evans 
PHIL  MAY  IN  CAP  AND  BELLS 193 

From  a  previously  unpublished  Drawing  by  Himself 
IN  THE  CHAMPS-ELYSEES,  PARIS 235 

From  the  Etching  by  Joseph  Pennell 

THE  HALF  HOUR  BEFORE  DINNER,  PARIS 244 

From  the  Etching  by  Joseph  Pennell 

ARISTIDE  BRUANT  OF  THE  CABARET  DU  MIRLITON,  PARIS  290 
From  the  Poster  by  Toulouse-Lautrec 


I 

DAYS 
A  WORD  TO  EXPLAIN 


NIGHTS    ^v 


DAYS 

A  WORD  TO  EXPLAIN 


IF  I  wrote  the  story  of  my  days  during  these 
last  thirty  years,  it  would  be  the  story  of 
hard  work.   No  doubt  the  work  often  looked 
to  others  uncommonly  like  play,  but  it  was 
work  all  the  same. 

From  the  start  it  must  have  struck  those  who 
did  not  understand  and  who  were  interested,  or 
curious  enough  to  spare  a  thought,  that  my  prin 
cipal  occupation  was  to  amuse  myself.  When  I 
was  young,  in  America  the  "trip  to  Europe"  was 
considered  the  crowning  pleasure,  or  symbol  of 
pleasure,  within  the  possibility  of  hope  for  even 
those  who  were  most  given  to  pleasure.  In  Phila 
delphia  it  also  stood  for  money — not  necessarily 
wealth,  but  the  comfortably  assured  income  that 
made  existence  behind  Philadelphia's  spacious 
red  brick  fronts  the  average  Philadelphian's 
right.  And  it  was  with  this  trip  that  J.  and  I 

13 


NIGHTS 

began  our  life  together.  But  misleading  as  was 
the  impression  made  to  all  whom  it  did  not  con 
cern,  great  satisfaction  as  it  was  to  my  family, 
who  saw  in  it  the  ease  and  comfort  it  represented 
to  the  Philadelphian,  we  ourselves,  with  the  best 
will  in  the  world,  could  imagine  it  no  holiday  for 
us,  nor  accept  it  as  the  symbol  of  the  correct 
Philadelphia  income.  Our  pleasure  was  in  the 
fact  of  the  many  and  definite  commissions  which 
obliged  us  to  go  to  Europe  to  earn  any  sort  of  an 
income,  correct  or  otherwise — commissions  with 
out  which  we  could  have  faced  neither  the  trip 
nor  marriage.  I  can  remember  that  during  the 
two  or  three  weeks  between  our  wedding  and  our 
sailing  we  were  both  kept  busy,  J.  with  drawings 
he  had  to  finish  for  the  Century,  and  I  with  the 
last  touches  to  an  article  for  the  Atlantic.  And 
if  the  days  on  the  boat  gave  us  breathing  space, 
if  not  much  work,  except  in  preparation,  was 
done,  the  reason  was  that  the  new  commissions 
commenced  only  with  our  landing  at  Liverpool. 
From  the  moment  of  our  arrival  in  England 
I  see  in  memory  my  life  by  day  as  one  long  vista 
of  work.  It  is  mostly  a  beautiful  vista,  the  more 
beautiful,  I  am  ready  to  admit,  because  the  work 
I  owed  the  beauty  to  forced  me  to  keep  my  eyes 
open  and  my  wits  about  me.  Under  the  circum- 
14 


DAYS:  A  WORD  TO  EXPLAIN 

stances,  I  simply  could  not  afford  to  let  what 
small  powers  of  observation  I  possess  grow  rusty, 
for,  no  matter  what  else  might  happen,  I  had  to 
turn  my  journey  into  some  sort  of  readable 
"copy"  afterwards.  If  I  know  parts  of  Europe 
fairly  well,  I  am  indebted  not  to  the  fashionable 
need  of  taking  waters,  not  to  following  the  ap 
proved  routes  of  travel,  not  to  meeting  my  fellow 
countrymen  in  hotels  as  alike  as  two  peas  no  mat 
ter  how  different  the  capitals  to  which  they  be 
long,  not  to  any  fatuous  preference  of  another 
country  to  my  own,  but  to  the  work  that  brought 
us  to  England  and  the  Continent  and  has  kept  us 
there,  with  fresh  commissions,  ever  since. 

It  was  work  that  sent  us  from  end  to  end  of 
Great  Britain  and  gave  me  my  knowledge  of  the 
land.  As  I  look  back  to  those  remote  days  after 
our  arrival  in  Liverpool,  I  see  J.  and  myself  on 
an  absurd,  old-fashioned,  long-superannuated 
Rotary  tandem  tricycle  riding  along  winding 
roads  and  lanes,  between  the  hedgerows  and 
under  the  elms  English  prose  and  verse  had  long 
since  made  familiar,  in  and  out  of  little  grey  or 
red  villages  clustered  round  the  old  church  tower, 
passing  through  great  towns  of  many  factories 
and  high  smoke-belching  chimneys,  halting  for 
months  under  the  shadow  of  some  old  castle  or 

15 


NIGHTS 

cathedral  that  had  been  appointed  one  of  our 
stations  by  the  way.  Or  I  see  us  both  trudging 
on  foot,  knapsacks  on  our  backs,  climbing  up 
and  down  the  brown  and  purple  hills  of  the 
Highlands,  circling  the  peaceful  lochs,  skirting 
the  swift  mountain  streams,  tramping  along  the 
lonely  roads  of  the  far  Hebrides :  summer  after 
summer  journeying  to  the  beautiful  places  the 
usual  tourist  in  Britain  journeys  to  for  pleasure, 
but  where  we  went  because  papers  and  magazines 
at  home,  with  a  wisdom  we  applauded,  had  asked 
us  to  go  and  make  the  drawings  and  write  the 
articles  by  which  we  paid  our  way  in  the  world. 
And  it  was  work  that  sent  us  from  end  to 
end  of  France,  and  now  in  looking  back  I  see  J. 
and  myself  on  the  neat,  compact  Humber  tan 
dem, — then  so  new-fashioned,  to-day  as  out 
moded  as  the  Rotary, — riding  along  straight  pop- 
lared  roads,  through  well-ordered  forests  and 
over  wild  hills,  between  vineyards,  one  year  under 
the  grey  skies  of  Flanders  or  among  the  lagoons 
of  Picardy  and  another  under  the  brilliant  sun 
shine  of  Provence  or  through  the  rich  pastures 
of  the  sweet  Bourbonnais,  in  and  out  of  ancient 
villages  and  towns  as  full  of  romance  as  their 
names,  with  halts  as  long  under  the  shadow  of 
still  nobler  churches  and  fairer  castles,  getting 
16 


DAYS:   A  WORD  TO  EXPLAIN 

to  know  the  people  and  their  ways  and  how  pleas 
ant  life  is  in  the  land  where  beauty  and  thrift, 
gaiety  and  toil,  courtesy  and  wit,  go  ever  hand 
in  hand. 

And  again  it  was  work  that  sent  us  still 
further  south,  to  Italy  which  in  my  younger  years 
I  had  longed  for  the  more  because  I  fancied  it 
as  inaccessible  to  me  as  Lhassa  or  the  Grande 
Chartreuse.  And  again  down  the  beautiful  vista 
of  work  I  see  J.  and  myself  still  on  the  neat  com 
pact  Humber,  but  now  pushing  up  long  white 
zigzags  to  grim  hill-towns,  rushing  down  the 
same  zigzags  into  radiant  valleys  of  fruit  and 
flowers,  winding  between  vineyards  where  the 
vines  were  festooned  from  tree  to  tree,  and  fields 
where  huge,  white,  wide-horned  oxen  pulled  the 
plough,  bumping  over  the  stones  of  old  Roman 
roads,  parting  with  the  wonderful  tandem  only 
for  the  long  stay  in  wonderful  Rome  and  wonder 
ful  Venice. 

And  again  it  was  work  that  sent  us,  now  each 
on  a  safety  bicycle — a  change  that  explains  how 
time  was  flying — by  the  canals  and  on  the  flat 
roads  of  Belgium  and  Holland;  into  Germany, 
through  the  Harz  with  Heine  for  guide,  by  the 
castled  Rhine  and  Moselle  that  may  have  lost 
their  reputation  for  a  while  but  that  can  never 
2  17 


NIGHTS 

lose  their  loveliness ;  into  Austria,  on  to  Hungary, 
up  in  the  Carpathians  and  to  those  heights  from 
which  the  Russian  Army  but  the  other  day  looked 
down  upon  the  Hungarian  plain ;  into  Spain,  to 
sun-burnt  Andalusia,  for  weeks  in  the  Alhambra, 
to  windy  Madrid,  for  days  in  the  Prado;  into 
Switzerland,  the  "  Play  ground  of  Europe," 
where  our  work  must  have  seemed  more  than 
ever  like  play  as  we  climbed,  on  our  cycles  and 
on  foot,  over  the  highest  of  the  high  Alpine 
passes,  one  after  the  other;  again  into  Italy; 
again  into  France;  again  through  England; 
again — but  they  were  too  numerous  to  count,  all 
those  journeys  that  claimed  so  many  of  my  days 
and  taught  me,  while  I  worked,  all  I  have  learned 
of  Europe. 

Of  such  well-travelled  roads  anyway,  it  may 
be  said  people  have  heard  as  much  as  people 
can  stand,  and  therefore  I  am  wise  to  hold  my 
peace  about  days  spent  upon  them.  But  on  the 
best-travelled  road  adventure  lies  in  wait  for 
the  traveller  who  seeks  it,  chance  awaits  the  dis 
coverer  who  knows  his  business.  Why,  to  this 
day  J.  and  I  are  appealed  to  for  facts  about  Le 
Puy  because  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  we  made 
our  discovery  of  the  town  as  the  Most  Pictur 
esque  Place  in  the  World  and  sought  our  ad- 
18 


DAYS:  A  WORD  TO  EXPLAIN 

venture  by  proclaiming  the  fact  in  print.  But 
our  discoveries  might  have  been  greater,  our 
adventures  more  daring,  and  I  should  be  silent 
about  them  now  for  quite  another  and  far  more 
sensible  reason,  and  this  is  that  I  was  not  silent 
at  the  time.  The  tale  of  those  old  days  is  told. 

II 

Other  journeys  I  made  had  no  less  an  air  of 
holiday-taking  and  meant  no  less  hard  labour. 
For  most  men  work  is  bounded  by  the  four  walls 
of  the  office  or  the  factory,  or  the  shop,  or  the 
school,  and  rigidly  regulated  by  hours,  and  they 
consequently  suspect  the  amateur  or  the  dawdler 
in  the  artist  or  writer  who  works  where  and  when 
and  as  he  pleases.  Journalism  has  led  me  into 
pleasant  places  but  never  by  the  path  of  idleness. 
Rare  has  been  the  month  of  May  that  has  not 
found  me  in  Paris,  not  for  the  sunshine  and 
gaiety  that  draw  the  tourist  to  it  in  that  gay  sun 
lit  season,  but  for  industrious  days,  with  my  eyes 
and  catalogue  and  note-book,  in  the  Salons.  Few 
have  been  the  International  Exhibitions,  from 
Glasgow  to  Ghent,  from  Antwerp  to  Venice,  that 
I  have  missed,  and  if  in  my  devoted  attendance 
I  might  easily  have  been  mistaken  for  the  tireless 
pleasure-seeker,  if  I  got  what  fun  I  could  at  odd 

19 


NIGHTS 

moments  out  of  my  opportunities,  never  was  I 
without  my  inseparable  note-book  and  pencil  in 
my  hand  or  in  my  pocket,  never  without  good, 
long,  serious  articles  to  be  written  in  my  hotel 
bedroom.  Even  in  London  when  I  might  have 
passed  for  the  idlest  stroller  along  Bond  Street 
or  Piccadilly  on  an  idle  afternoon,  oftener  than 
not  I  have  been  bound  for  a  gallery  somewhere 
with  the  prospect  of  long  hours'  writing  as  the 
result  of  it.  But  though  the  task  varied,  the  tale 
of  these  days  as  well  has  been  told,  and  has  duly 
appeared  in  the  long  columns  of  many  a  paper, 
in  the  long  articles  of  many  a  magazine. 

Ill 

As  time  went  on,  my  journeys  were  fewer  and 
J.  took  his  oftener  by  himself.  A  new  variety  of 
task  was  set  me  that  left  so  little  leisure  for  the 
galleries  that  I  gave  up  "doing"  them  for  my 
London  papers.  My  days  went  to  the  making 
of  books  which,  whether  I  wrote  them  alone  or 
in  collaboration  with  J.,  required  my  undivided 
attention.  When  these  were  such  books  as  the 
Life  of  My  Uncle,  Charles  Godfrey  Leland,  or 
the  Life  of  Whistler,  they  called  for  research, 
days  of  reading  in  the  Art  Library  at  South  Ken 
sington,  the  British  Museum,  the  London  Li- 
20 


DAYS:  A  WORD  TO  EXPLAIN 

brary,  days  of  seeing  people  and  places,  days  of 
travelling,  days  of  correspondence,  days  upon 
days  at  my  desk  writing— these  days  crowded 
with  interesting  incident,  curious  surprises, 
amusing  talk,  hours  of  hope,  hours  of  black  de 
spair — in  their  own  way  days  of  discovery  and 
adventure.  But  in  this  case  again  the  tale  has 
been  told  and  I  am  not  so  foolish  as  to  sit  down 
and  tell  it  anew,  sorely  as  I  may  be  tempted. 
Anybody  who  reads  further  will  find  that  the 
principal  truth  my  nights  have  revealed  to  me  is 
that  the  man  who  is  interested — really  inter 
ested — in  something,  does  not  want  to  talk,  and 
often  cannot  think,  about  anything  else.  But  it 
does  not  follow  that  he  can  make  sure  of  listeners 
as  keen  to  hear  about  it.  The  writer  may,  in  his 
enthusiasm,  write  the  same  book  twice,  but  even 
if  it  prove  a  " best-seller"  the  first  time,  he  runs  a 
risk  the  second  of  seeing  it  disposed  of  as  a 
remainder. 

IV 

So  it  has  been  throughout  my  working  life : 
my  day's  task  has  had  no  other  object  than  to 
get  itself  chronicled  in  print.  If  what  the  work 
was  that  filled  my  day  is  not  known,  it  could  not 
interest  anybody  were  I  to  write  about  it  now.  If 

21 


NIGHTS 

how  I  worked  during  all  those  long  hours  is  to 
me  an  all-absorbing  subject  and  edifying  spec 
tacle,  I  am  not  so  vain  as  not  to  realize  that  I 
must  be  the  only  person  to  find  it  so.  Most  men — 
and  women  too — were  brought  into  the  world  to 
work,  but  most  of  them  would  be  so  willing  to 
shirk  the  obligation  that  the  best  they  ask  is  to 
be  allowed  to  forget  their  own  labours  while  they 
can,  and  not  to  be  bothered  with  a  report  of  other 
people's.  By  nature  I  am  inclined  to  Charles 
Lamb's  belief  that  a  man — or  a  woman — cannot 
have  too  little  to  do  and  too  much  time  to  do  it  in. 
But  necessity  having  forced  me  to  give  over  my 
days  to  work,  it  happens  that  I,  personally,  would 
from  sheer  force  of  habit  find  days  without  it  a 
bore.  However,  I  would  not,  for  that  reason, 
argue  that  work  is  its  own  reward  to  any  save 
the  genius,  or  that  methods  of  work  are  of  im 
portance  to  any  save  the  workman  who  employs 
them. 

Whatever  man's  endurance  may  be,  I  know 
one  weak  woman  whose  powers  of  work  are 
limited.  There  was  never  anybody  to  regulate 
my  day  of  work  save  myself,  since  I  am  glad  to 
say  it  has  not  been  my  lot  to  waste  the  golden 
years  of  my  life  in  an  office,  and  I  am  not  the 
stern  task-master  or  tiresome  trade-unionist  who 
22 


DAYS:   A  WORD  TO  EXPLAIN 

insists  upon  so  many  hours  and  so  much  work 
in  them,  and  will  make  not  an  inch  of  allowance 
either  more  or  less.  Sometimes  my  hours  were 
more,  sometimes  they  were  less,  but  always  my 
energy  was  apt  to  slacken  with  the  slackening  of 
the  day.  I  never  found  inspiration  in  the  mid 
night  oil  and  oceans  of  coffee.  I  have  always 
wanted  my  solid  eight  hours  of  sleep,  and  would 
not  shrink  from  nine  or  ten  if  they  fitted  in  with 
a  worker's  life.  Youth  often  gave  me  the  cour 
age  I  have  not  now  to  take  up  work  again — a 
promised  article,  necessary  reading,  making 
notes,  copying — at  night.  But  youth  never  in 
duced  me  to  rely  upon  this  night  work  if  I  could 
help  it.  My  nearest  approach  to  a  rule  was  that 
at  the  end  of  the  day  I  was  at  liberty  to  play,  that 
my  nights  at  least  could  be  free  of  work. 

The  play  to  many  might  pass  for  a  mild  form 
of  mild  amusement,  for  it  usually  consisted  in 
nothing  more  riotous  than  meeting  my  friends 
and  talking  with  them.  But  I  confess  that  the 
talk  and  the  quality  of  it,  the  meeting  and  its 
informality  did  strike  me  as  so  singularly  stimu 
lating  as  to  verge  upon  the  riotous.  The  manner 
of  playing  was  entirely  new  to  me  in  the  begin 
ning.  All  conventions  bind  with  a  heavy  chain, 
but  none  with  a  heavier  than  the  Philadelphia 

23 


NIGHTS 

variety.  Spruce  Street  nights  had  never  been 
so  free  and  so  vociferous  and  so  late,  and,  being 
a  good  Philadelphian,  I  am  not  sure  if  the  nights 
that  succeeded  have  yet  lost  for  me  their  novelty. 
As  a  consequence,  if,  in  looking  back,  my  days 
appear  to  be  wholly  monopolized  by  work,  my 
nights  seem  consecrated  as  wholly  to  amusement. 
The  poet's  " hideous"  is  the  last  adjective  I  could 
apply  to  the  night  my  busy  day  sank  into. 

How  I  worked  may  concern  nobody  save  my 
self,  but  how  I  played  I  cannot  help  hoping  has 
a  wider  interest.  Those  old  nights  were  typical 
of  a  period,  and  they  threw  me  with  many  people, 
contemporaries  of  J.  's  and  mine,  who  did  much 
to  make  that  period  what  it  was.  The  nights  as 
gay,  as  stimulating,  that  I  have  spent  in  other 
people's  houses  I  have  not  the  courage  to  recall 
except  in  the  utmost  privacy.  Pepys  and  N.  P. 
Willis  in  their  time,  no  less  than  a  whole  army  of 
Pamelas  and  Priscillas  in  ours,  have  shown  the 
lengths  and  indiscretions  to  which  so  intimate  a 
breach  of  hospitality  may  lead.  I  have  had  my 
experience.  For  some  years  a  house  with  closely 
curtained  windows  has  reproached  me  daily  for 
not  understanding  that  the  man  who  invites  the 
world  to  stare  at  him  and  is  not  happy  if  it  won't, 
objects  when  his  neighbours  say  lightly  what 
24 


DAYS:  A  WORD  TO  EXPLAIN 

they  see.  I  am  every  bit  as  afraid  to  speak  openly 
of  those  people  who  shared  our  nights  and  who, 
with  us,  have  outlived  them.  Cowardice  long 
since  convinced  me  that  it  is  not  of  the  dead,  but 
of  the  living,  only  good  should  be  spoken — and 
if  good  cannot  be  spoken,  what  then  ?  However, 
it  is  not  in  pursuit  of  problems  that  I  have  busied 
myself  in  reviving  those  old  nights,  but  rather 
for  the  pleasure  we  all  of  us  have,  as  the  years 
go  on,  in  feeling  our  way  back  along  the  Cor 
ridors  of  Time  and  living  our  past  over  again  in 
memory.  If  I  go  further  and  live  mine  over 
again  in  print,  it  is  because  I  like  to  think  the 
fault  will  not  lie  with  me  if  it  altogether  dies — I 
have  given  it,  anyway,  the  chance  of  a  longer 
lease  of  life. 


II 

NIGHTS 
IN  ROME 


IN  ROME 


IT  will  give  an  idea  of  what  ages  ago  those 
nights  were,  and  of  the  youth  I  brought  to 
them,  if  I  say  that  I  arrived  in  Rome  on 
the  first  tandem  tricycle  ever  seen  in  Italy. 
I  can  look  back  to  it  now  with  pride,  for  I  was, 
in  my  way,  a  pioneer,  but  there  was  not  much  to 
be  proud  about  at  the  time.  Rome  was  so  little 
impressed  that  J.,  my  fellow  pioneer,  and  I, — 
J.  and  I  who  in  every  town  on  the  way  from 
Florence  had  been  the  delight  of  the  gaping 
crowd,  J.  and  I  who  in  all  those  beautiful  October 
days  on  the  white  roads  of  Italy  had  suffered 
from  nothing  save  the  excess  of  the  people's 
amiable  attentions, — scarcely  showed  ourselves 
beyond  the  Porta  del  Popolo  and  the  Piazza  of 
the  same  name,  before  we  were  arrested  for  driv 
ing  the  tandem  furiously  through  the  Corso — as 
if  anybody  could  drive  anything  furiously 
through  the  Corso  at  the  hour  before  sunset,  when 
all  the  world  comes  home  from  the  BorgJiese. 
But  two  policemen,  drawing  their  swords  as  if 
they  meant  business,  commanded  us  to  dismount 
and,  between  them,  we  walked  ignominiously  to 

29 


NIGHTS 

the  hotel,  pushing  the  tricycle ;  and  an  astonished 
and  not  in  the  least  admiring  crowd  followed; 
and  the  policeman  asked  us  for  a  lira,  which  we 
refused,  taking  it  for  a  proof  of  the  corruption 
of  modern  Rome — and  they  were  so  within  their 
legal  rights  that  I  do  not  care  to  say  for  how  many 
more  than  one  we  were  asked  a  few  weeks  later 
by  the  Syndic,  whom  we  could  not  refuse ;  and 
altogether  I  do  not  think  we  were  to  blame  if, 
after  the  policemen  and  the  swords  and  the  crowd 
had  gone  and  the  tricycle  was  locked  up,  and 
we  wandered  from  the  hotel  in  the  gathering 
dusk,  we  were  the  two  most  ill-tempered  young 
people  who  ever  set  out  to  enjoy  their  first  night 
in  Rome. 

Nor  was  our  temper  improved  when  J.'s  in 
stinct,  which  in  a  strange  place  takes  him  straight 
where  he  wants  to  go,  having  got  us  into  the 
Ghetto,  failed  to  get  us  out  again.  The  Ghetto 
itself  was  all  right,  so  what  a  Ghetto  ought  to  be 
that  had  I  been  the  Romans,  I  would  not  have 
pulled  it  down,  I  would  have  preserved  it  as  a 
historical  monument, — dirty,  dark  and  mysteri 
ous,  a  labyrinth  of  narrow  crooked  streets,  lined 
with  tall  grim  houses,  filled  with  melodramatic 
shadows  and  dim  figures  skulking  in  them,  but  a 
nightmare  of  a  labyrinth  which  kept  bringing  us 
30 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

forever  back  to  the  same  spot.  And  we  could  not 
dine  on  picturesqueness,  and  we  would  not  have 
dined  in  any  of  the  murderous-looking  houses  at 
any  price,  and  at  last  J.  admitted  that  there  were 
times  when  a  native  might  be  a  better  guide  than 
instinct,  and  in  his  best  Italian  he  asked  the  way 
of  two  men  who  were  passing.  One,  who  wore 
the  tweeds  and  flannel  shirt  by  which  in  calmer 
moments  we  must  have  recognized  him,  pulled 
the  other  by  the  sleeve  and  growled  in  English : 
"  Come  on,  don't  bother  about  the  beastly  for 
eigners!"  I  can  afford  to  forgive  him  to-day 
when  I  remember  what  his  incivility  cost  Trim  not 
only  that  night,  when  we  would  not  let  him  off 
until  he  had  shown  us  out  of  the  Ghetto,  but  on 
a  succession  of  our  nights  in  Eome,  Fate  having 
neatly  arranged  that  at  the  one  house  whose  doors 
were  opened  to  us  he  should  be  a  constant  visitor. 
Other  doors  might  have  opened  had  we  had 
the  clothes  in  which  to  knock  at  them.  But  we 
had  come  to  Eome  for  four  days  with  no  more 
baggage  than  the  tandem  could  carry,  and  we 
stayed  four  months  without  adding  to  it.  We 
could  have  sent  for  our  trunks,  of  course,  or  we 
could  have  bought  new  things  in  the  Roman 
shops,  but  we  did  neither,  I  can  hardly  say  why 
except  that  the  story  of  our  journey  had  to  be 

31 


NIGHTS 

finished,  and  other  delightful  articles  we  had 
crossed  the  Atlantic  to  do  were  waiting,  and  these 
were  commissions  that  could  not  be  neglected, 
since  they  were  the  capital  upon  which  we  had 
started  out  on  our  married  life  five  months  be 
fore.  And  our  Letter  of  Credit  was  small,  and 
Youth  is  stern  with  itself ; — or,  more  likely,  we 
did  not  trouble  simply  because  it  saved  so  much 
more  trouble  not  to.  No  woman  would  have  to 
be  taught  by  Ibsen  or  anybody  else  how  to  live 
her  own  life,  were  she  willing  to  live  it  in  shabby 
clothes.  It  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  do,  I  know.  I 
share  the  weakness  of  most  women  in  feeling  it 
a  disgrace,  or  a  misfortune,  to  be  caught  in  the 
wrong  clothes  in  the  right  place.  But  that  year 
in  Rome  I  had  not  outgrown  the  first  ardours  of 
work  and,  besides,  in  the  old  days,  a  cycle  seemed 
an  excuse  for  any  and  all  degrees  of  shabbiness. 
In  my  short  skirts,  at  a  time  when  short  skirts 
were  not  the  mode,  covered  with  mud,  and  carry 
ing  a  tiny  bag,  I  have  walked  into  the  biggest 
hotels  of  Europe  without  a  tremor,  conscious 
that  the  cycle  at  the  door  was  my  triumphant 
apology.  The  cyclist 's  dress,  like  the  nun's  uni 
form,  was  a  universal  passport,  and  I  have  never 
had  the  cleverness  to  invent  another  to  replace 
it  since  I  gave  up  cycling. 
32 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

II 

If  we  could  not  spend  our  nights  in  other 
people's  houses,  neither  could  we  spend  them  in 
the  rooms  we  had  taken  for  ourselves  at  the  top 
of  one  of  the  highest  houses  on  the  top  of  one  of 
the  highest  hills  in  Rome.  There  was  no  objec 
tion  to  the  rooms:  they  were  charming,  but  we 
had  found  them  on  a  warm  November  day  when 
the  sun  was  streaming  in  through  the  windows 
that  looked  far  and  wide  over  the  town,  and 
beyond  to  the  Campagna,  and  still  beyond  to  a 
shining  line  on  the  horizon  we  knew  was  the 
Mediterranean,  and  we  did  not  ask  about  any 
thing  save  the  price,  which  to  our  surprise  we 
could  pay,  and  so  we  moved  in  at  once.  Nor  for 
days,  as  we  sat  at  our  work  in  the  sunlight,  the 
windows  open  and  Rome  at  our  feet,  did  we 
imagine  there  could  be  anything  to  ask  about, 
except  if,  by  asking,  we  could  prevail  upon  the 
Padrona's  son-in-law  to  go  and  blow  his  melan 
choly  cornet  anywhere  rather  than  on  the  roof 
directly  over  our  heads.  Living  in  rooms  was 
the  nearest  approach  I  had  made  in  all  my  life  to 
housekeeping,  I  was  still  in  a  state  of  wonder 
ment  at  everything  in  Rome,  from  Romulus  and 
Remus  on  the  morning  pat  of  butter  to  the 
November  roses  iij  full  bloom  on  the  Pincian,  I 

3  33 


NIGHTS 

was  quite  content  to  let  practical  affairs  and 
domestic  details  look  out  for  themselves — or,  per 
haps  it  would  be  more  true  to  say  that  I  never 
gave  them  a  thought. 

But  even  in  Rome  the  sun  must  set  and 
November  nights  grow  chill,  and  a  night  came 
when,  after  a  day  of  rain,  a  fire  would  have  been 
pleasant,  and  suddenly  we  discovered  there  was 
no  place  to  make  it  in.  It  had  never  occurred  to 
us  that  there  could  not  be,  fresh  as  we  were  from 
the  land  where  heat  in  the  house  is  as  much  a  mat 
ter  of  course  as  a  sun  in  the  sky.  At  first  we 
wrapped  ourselves  in  shawls  and  blankets,  hired 
the  padrona's  biggest  scaldino,  and  called  it  an 
experience.  After  a  few  evenings  we  decided  it 
was  an  experience  we  could  do  without  and,  like 
all  miserable  Romans  who  have  no  fireplace,  we 
settled  down  to  spending  our  nights  in  the 
restaurants  and  cafes  of  Rome. 

I  doubt  if  I  should  care  to  spend  my  nights 
that  way  now ;  a  quarter  of  a  century  has  added 
unexpected  charm  to  a  dinner-table  and  fireside 
of  my  own;  but  no  Arabian  Nights  could  then 
have  been  fuller  of  entertainment  than  the 
Roman  Nights  that  drove  us  from  home  in  search 
of  warmth  and  food.  In  Philadelphia  there 
never  had  been  a  suspicion  of  chance,  a  shadow 
34 


Etching  by  Joseph  Pennell 


OLD  AND  XEW  ROME 


.    . 


- .   . 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

of  adventure  about  my  dinner.  It  was  as  inevi 
table  as  six  o'clock  and  as  inevitably  eaten  in  the 
seclusion  of  the  Philadelphia  second-story  back- 
building  dining-room,  if  not  of  my  family,  then 
of  one  or  another  of  my  friends.  In  Rome  it 
became  a  delightful  uncertainty  that  transformed 
the  six  flights  of  stairs  leading  to  it  from  our 
rooms  into  the  i '  Eoad  to  Anywhere. ' '  That  road 
was  by  no  means  an  easy  one  to  climb  up  again 
and  if  we  could  help  it,  we  never  climbed  down 
more  than  once  a  day,  usually  a  little  before  dusk, 
a  few  hours  earlier  when  we  were  in  a  rare  holi 
day  mood,  and  always  in  time  for  a  long  or  short 
tramp  before  dinner.  If  we  came  to  a  church 
we  dropped  into  it,  or  a  gallery,  or  a  palace,  or  a 
garden,  when  we  were  in  time.  We  followed  the 
streets  wherever  they  might  lead, — along  the 
brand-new  Via  Nazionale  to  the  Forum  or  the 
narrow  alleys  to  St.  Peter's,  beyond  the  gates  to 
the  Campagna — seeing  a  good  deal  of  Rome  with 
out  setting  out  deliberately  to  see  anything. 
When  we  were  hungry,  we  stopped  at  the  first 
Trattoria  we  passed,  provided  it  looked  as  if  we 
could  afford  it,  and  the  chance  dinner  in  a  chance 
place  at  a  chance  hour  was  the  biggest  adventure 
of  all  that  had  crowded  the  way  to  it. 

One  night  the  Trattoria  happened  to  be  the 

35 


NIGHTS 

Posta  in  a  narrow  street  back  of  the  Piazza  Col- 
onna.  It  was  small :  not  more  than  twenty  could 
have  dined  there  together  in  any  comfort.  It 
was  beautifully  clean.  And  the  padrone,  his  son, 
and  the  one  waiter — all  the  establishment — 
greeted  us  with  that  enchanting  smile  to  which, 
during  my  first  year  in  Italy,  I  fell  only  too  ready 
a  victim.  Once  we  had  dined  at  the  Posta,  we 
found  it  so  pleasant  that  we  fell  into  the  habit 
of  getting  hungry  in  its  neighbourhood. 

I  have  since  got  to  know  many  more  famous 
or  pretentious  restaurants,  but  never  have  din 
ners  tasted  so  good  as  at  this  little  Roman  trat 
toria  where  we  had  to  consider  the  centesimi  in 
the  price  of  every  dish,  and  the  quarter  of  a  flask 
of  cheap  Cliianti  shared  between  us  was  an  ex 
travagance,  and  we  ate  with  the  appetite  that 
came  of  having  eaten  nothing  all  day  save  rolls 
and  coffee  for  breakfast,  and  fruit  and  rolls  for 
lunch,  that  we  might  afford  a  dinner  at  night. 
And  I  have  dined  in  many  restaurants  of  gilded 
and  mirrored  magnificence,  but  in  none  I  thought 
so  well  decorated  as  the  Posta  with  its  bare  walls 
and  coarse  clean  linen  and  no  ornament  at  all, 
except  the  stand  in  the  centre  where  we  could 
pick  out  our  fruit  or  our  vegetable.  Nor  has 
any  restaurant,  crowded  with  the  creations  of 
36 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

Paquin  and  Worth,  seemed  more  brilliant  than 
the  Posta  filled  with  officers.  In  Philadelphia  I 
had  never  seen  an  army  officer  in  uniform  in  my 
life ;  at  the  Posta  I  saw  hardly  anything  else.  We 
were  surrounded  by  lieutenants  and  captains  and 
colonels,  and  as  I  watched  them  come  and  go 
with  clank  and  clatter  of  spurs  and  swords,  and 
military  salutes  at  the  door,  and  military  cloaks 
thrown  dramatically  off  and  on,  and  gold  braid 
shining,  I  began  to  think  a  big  standing  army 
worth  the  money  to  any  country,  on  condition 
that  it  always  went  in  uniform — on  condition,  I 
might  now  add,  that  this  uniform  is  not  khaki, 
then  not  yet  heard  of.  When  the  old  spare,  griz 
zled  General,  always  the  last,  appeared  and  all 
the  other  officers  rose  upon  his  entrance,  our 
dinner  was  dignified  into  a  ceremony.  Some 
times,  I  fancied  he  felt  his  importance  more  than 
anybody,  for  he  is  the  only  man  I  have  ever 
known  courageous  enough  in  public  to  begin  his 
dinner  with  cake  and  finish  it  with  soup. 

Now  and  then,  on  very  special  occasions,  when 
we  had  sent  off  an  article  or  received  a  cheque, 
we  went  to  the  Falcone  and  celebrated  the  event 
by  feasting  on  Maccheroni  alia  Napolitana,  Cing- 
hale  alVAgra  Dolce  and  wine  of  Orvieto.  The 
Falcone  was  another  accident  of  our  tramps, 

37 


NIGHTS 

though  we  afterwards  found  it  starred  in  Baed 
eker.  It  looked  the  centuries  old  it  was  said 
to  be,  such  a  shabby,  sombre  crypt  of  a  restau 
rant  that  I  accepted  without  question  the  tradi 
tion  it  cherished  of  itself  as  a  haunt  of  the 
Caesars,  and  was  prepared  to  believe  the  waiters 
when  they  pointed  out  the  mark  of  the  Imperial 
head  on  the  greasy  walls,  just  as  the  waiters  of 
the  Cheshire  Cheese  in  London  point  to  the  mark 
of  Dr.  Johnson's,  while  the  flamboyancy  of  the 
cooking  revealed  to  me  the  real  reason  of  the 
decline  and  fall  of  Rome.  I  am  afraid  I  should 
be  telling  the  story  of  our  own  decline  and  fall 
had  we  sent  off  articles  and  received  cheques 
every  day.  Fortunately,  the  intervals  were  long 
between  the  feasts,  but  unfortunately  our  diges 
tion  can  never  again  be  imperilled  at  the  Fal 
cone,  for  they  tell  me  it  has  gone  with  the  Ghetto 
and  so  many  other  things  in  the  Rome  I  knew 
and  loved. 

By  the  middle  of  the  winter  we  gave  up  the 
Posta  and  went  to  the  Cavour  instead.  I  don't 
know  how  we  had  the  heart  to,  for  the  Cavour 
never  had  the  same  charm  for  us,  we  never  got 
to  like  it  so  well.  It  was  too  large  and  popular 
for  friendliness,  the  officers  carried  their  cere 
mony  and  gorgeousness  to  a  room  apart,  and 
38 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

the  padrone  and  his  waiters  were  too  busy  for 
more  than  one  fixed  smile  of  general  welcome. 
But  then  there,  if  we  paid  for  our  dinner  by  the 
month,  it  cost  us  next  to  nothing  by  the  day,  and 
our  Letter  of  Credit  allowed  as  narrow  a  margin 
for  sentiment  as  for  clothes.  Moreover,  the  din 
ner  was  good  as  well  as  cheap.  And  when  the 
streets  of  Eome  were  rivers  of  rain,  as  they  often 
were  that  winter,  it  was  brought  to  our  rooms  in 
a  dinner  pail  by  a  waiter,  after  he  had  first  come 
half  a  mile  to  submit  the  menu  to  us,  and  in  that 
cold,  bleak  interior,  wrapped  in  blankets,  a 
scaldino  at  our  feet,  a  newspaper  for  tablecloth, 
we  made  a  picnic  of  it,  freezing,  but  thankful  not 
to  be  drowned.  And  on  great  holidays,  the  pad 
rone  spared  us  a  smile  all  to  ourselves  as  he 
offered  us,  with  the  compliments  of  the  season, 
a  plate  of  torrone  and  a  bottle  of  old  wine  from 
his  vineyard. 

Ill 

With  dinner  the  night  was  but  beginning  and 
smiles  must  have  faded  had  we  lingered  over  it 
indefinitely.  I  learned  to  my  astonishment,  how 
ever,  that  hours  could  be,  or  rather  were  expected 
to  be,  devoted  to  the  drinking  of  one  small  cup 
of  coffee,  and  that  always  near  the  trattoria  was 

39 


NIGHTS 

a  cafe  *  which  provided  the  coffee  and,  at  the  cost 
of  a  few  cents,  could  become  our  home  for  as  long 
and  as  late  as  might  suit  us.  In  Philadelphia 
after  dinner  coffee  had  been  swallowed  promptly, 
in  the  back  parlour  if  we  were  dining  alone,  in 
the  front  if  people  were  dining  with  us,  and  I 
was  startled  to  find  it  in  Rome  an  excuse  to  loaf 
at  a  convenient  distance  from  the  domestic  hearth 
for  Eomans  with  apparently  nothing  to  do  and 
all  their  time  to  do  it  in. 

It  is  an  arrangement  I  take  now  as  a  matter 
of  course.  But  then,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind, 
for  me  only  five  months  separated  Eome  from 
Philadelphia,  arid  Philadelphia  bonds  are  not 
easily  broken.  I  suspected  something  wrong  in 
so  agreeable  a  custom,  as  youth  usually  does  in 
the  pleasant  things  of  life,  and  as  a  Philadelphian 
always  does  in  the  unaccustomed,  and  at  first, 
when  we  went  to  the  ancient  Greco,  I  tried  to 
believe  it  was  entirely  the  result  of  J.'s  interest 
in  a  place  where  artists  had  drunk  coffee  for  gen 
erations.  When  we  deserted  it  because,  despite 
its  traditions,  nobody  went  there  any  longer  save 

*Note. — Let  me  anticipate  the  amiable  critic — and  say 
that  I  know  this  is  not  the  Italian  spelling  of  caf6.  I  use 
the  French  spelling  tiere,  as  in  later  chapters  where  it  be 
longs,  for  the  sake  of  uniformity  throughout. 

40 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

a  few  grey-bearded  old  men  and  a  few  gold-laced 
hall  porters,  and  the  dulness  fell  like  a  pall  upon 
us,  and  the  atmosphere  was  rank,  and  when  we 
patronized  instead  a  brand-new  cafe  in  the  Corso 
that  called  itself  in  French  the  Cafe  de  Venise 
and  in  English  the  Meet  of  Best  Society,  I  put 
down  the  attraction  to  the  Daily  News,  to  which 
the  cafe  subscribed,  and  for  which  in  those  days 
Andrew  Lang  was  writing  the  leaders  every 
body  was  reading.  But  Lang  could  not  recon 
cile  us  to  the  nightly  Gran  Concerto  of  a  piano, 
a  flute  and  a  violin  of  indifferent  merit  con 
cealed  in  a  thicket  of  artificial  trees,  and  the 
Best  Society  meant  tourists,  and  after  we  had 
shocked  a  family  of  New  England  friends  by  in 
viting  them  to  share  its  tawdry  pleasures  with 
us,  and  after  a  few  evenings  had  given  us,  un 
accompanied,  all  and  more  than  we  could  stand 
of  it,  we  exchanged  it  for  a  cafe  without  a  past 
and  with  no  aspirations  as  the  Meet  of  any  save 
the  usual  cafe  society  of  a  big  Italian  town.  By 
this  time  I  had  ceased  to  worry  about  excuses  and 
had  settled  down  to  idleness  and  coffee  with  as 
little  scruple  as  the  natives. 

The  cafe  we  chose  was  the  Nazionale  Aragno 
in  the  Corso,  the  largest  and  most  gorgeous  in 
Rome.  The  three  or  four  rooms  that  opened  one 

41 


NIGHTS 

out  of  the  other  had  a  magnificence  that  we  could 
never  have  achieved  in  furnished  rooms  and 
would  not  have  wanted  to  if  we  could,  and  a  suc 
cession  of  mirrors  multiplied  them  indefinitely. 
We  leaned  luxuriously  against  blue  plush,  gild 
ing  glittered  wherever  gilding  could  on  white 
walls,  waiters  rushed  about  with  little  shining 
nickel-plated  trays  held  high  above  their  heads, 
spurs  and  swords  clanked  and  clattered,  by  the 
middle  of  the  evening  not  a  table  was  vacant. 

It  was  simply  the  usual  big  Continental  cafe, 
but  to  me  as  new  and  strange  as  everything  else 
in  the  wonderful  life  in  the  wonderful  world  into 
which  I  had  strayed  from  the  old  familiar  ways 
of  Philadelphia,  with  a  long  halt  between  only 
in  England  where  the  cafe  does  not  exist.  To 
the  marble-topped  tables,  the  gilding,  mirrors 
and  plush,  novelty  lent  a  charm  they  have  never 
had  since  and  probably  would  soon  have  lost  had 
we  been  left  to  contemplate  them  in  solitary  state, 
as  it  seemed  probable  we  should.  For  we  knew 
nobody  in  Rome  except  Sandro,  the  youthful  en 
thusiastic  Roman  cyclist  we  had  picked  up  in 
Montepulciano,  cycled  with  through  the  Val  di 
Chiana  on  a  sunny  October  Sunday,  and  run 
across  again  in  Rome  where  he  amiably  showed 
us  the  hospitality  of  the  capital  by  occasionally 
42 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

drinking  coffee  with  us  at  our  expense,  and  by 
once  introducing  a  friend,  a  tall,  slim,  good-look 
ing  young  man  of  such  elegance  of  manner  and 
such  a  princely  air  of  condescension,  that  Sandro 
himself  was  impressed  and  joined  us  again,  later 
on  the  same  evening,  to  explain  our  privilege  in 
having  entertained  the  Queen's  hair-dresser  un 
awares.  Foreigners  did  not  often  find  their  way 
into  the  Nazionale.  They  were  almost  as  few  in 
number  as  women,  who  were  very  few,  for  as 
women  in  Rome  never  dined, — or  so  I  gathered 
from  my  observations  at  the  Posta,  the  Falcone 
and  the  Cavour, — they  never  drank  coffee.  Only 
on  Sundays  would  they  descend  upon  the  cafe 
with  their  husbands  and  children,  and  then  it  was 
to  devour  ices  and  cakes  at  a  rate  that  convinced 
me  they  devoured  little  else  from  one  Sunday 
to  the  next.  When  I  asked  for  the  Times — they 
took  the  Times  at  the  Nazionale — the  waiter 
almost  invariably  answered :  "It  reads  itself,  the 
Signore  Tedesco  has  it,"  and  the  Signore  Ted- 
esco,  a  mild  German  student  who  for  his  daily 
lesson  in  English  read  the  advertisement  columns 
from  beginning  to  end,  was  the  only  foreigner 
who  appeared  regularly  at  any  table  save  our 
own. 

And  yet  at  ours,  before  I  could  say  how  it 

43 


NIGHTS 

came  about,  a  little  group  collected,  and  every 
evening  in  the  furthest  room  J.  and  I  began  to 
hold  an  informal  reception  which  gave  us  all 
the  advantages  of  social  life  and  none  of  its 
responsibilities.  We  could  preside  in  the  travel- 
worn  tweeds  of  cycling  and  not  bother  because 
we  were  not  dressed;  we  could  welcome  our 
friends  the  more  cordially  because,  as  we  did  not 
provide  the  entertainment,  it  was  no  offence  to 
us  if  they  did  not  like  it,  nor  to  them  if  we  failed 
to  sit  it  out.  In  the  cafe  we  found  the  "  oblivion 
of  care,'7  the  same  " freedom  from  solitude," 
though  not  the  big  words  to  express  it,  which 
Dr.  Johnson  " experienced"  in  a  tavern.  Were 
all  social  functions  run  on  the  same  broad  prin 
ciples,  society  would  not  be  half  the  strain  it  is 
upon  everybody's  patience  and  good-nature  and 
purse. 

Almost  all  the  group  were  artists.  In  those 
days  artists  and  students  were  no  longer  rushing 
to  Home  as  the  one  place  to  study  art  in,  nor 
had  the  effort  begun  to  revive  its  old  reputation 
among  them.  Still  a  good  many  were  always 
about.  Some  lived  there,  others,  like  ourselves, 
were  spending  the  winter,  or  else  were  just  pass 
ing  through,  and,  once  we  had  collected  the  group 
44 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

round  our  table,  I  do  not  believe  we  were  ever 
left  to  pass  an  evening  alone. 

Artists  were  as  great  a  novelty  to  me  as  the 
cafe — I  had  been  married  so  short  a  time  that  J. 
had  not  ceased  to  be  a  problem,  if  he  ever  has — 
and  nothing  was  more  amazing  to  me  than  the 
talk.  Its  volubility  took  my  breath  away.  I 
thought  of  the  back  parlour  at  home  after  dinner, 
my  Father  playing  interminable  games  of  Pa 
tience,  the  rest  of  us  deep  in  our  books  until  bed 
time.  And  these  men  talked  as  if  talk  was  the 
only  business,  the  only  occupation  of  life. 

Still  more  surprising  was  the  subject  of  their 
talk.  If  they  had  so  much  to  say  that  it  made  me 
grateful  I  was  born  a  listener,  they  had  only  one 
thing  to  say  it  about.  It  was  art  from  the  moment 
we  met  until  we  parted,  though  we  might  sit  over 
our  coffee  for  hours.  Often  it  was  next  morning 
when  J.  and  I  reached  the  house  at  the  top  of  the 
hill,  and  he  dragged  the  huge  key  from  his  pocket, 
undid  the  ponderous  lock  and  struck  the  over 
grown  match,  or  undersized  candle,  by  which  the 
Roman  lit  himself  to  his  rooms,  and  we  panted 
up  our  six  flights  afraid  ours  would  not  last,  for 
we  had  but  the  one  supplied  by  the  restaurant. 

The  quality  of  the  talk  was  as  amazing :  be 
wildering,  revolutionary,  to  anybody  who  had 

45 


NIGHTS 

never  heard  art  talked  about  by  artists,  as  I  never 
had  before  I  met  J.  All  I  had  thought  right 
turned  out  to  be  wrong,  all  I  had  never  thought 
of  was  right,  all  that  was  essential  to  the  critic  of 
art,  to  the  Ruskin-bred,  had  nothing  to  do  with  it 
whatever.  History,  dates,  periods,  schools,  senti 
ment,  meaning,  attributions,  Morelli  only  as  yet 
threatening  to  succeed  Ruskin  as  prophet  of 
art,  were  not  worth  discussion  or  thought.  The 
concern  was  for  art  as  a  trade — the  trade  which 
creates  beauty;  the  vital  questions  were  treat 
ment,  colour,  values,  tone,  mediums.  The  price  of 
pictures  and  the  gains  of  artists,  those  absorbing 
topics  of  the  great  little  men  in  England  to-day, 
were  never  mentioned:  the  man  who  sold  was 
looked  down  on,  rather.  There  were  nights  when 
I  went  away  believing  that  nothing  mattered  in 
the  world  except  the  ground  on  a  copper  plate,  or 
the  grain  of  a  canvas,  or  the  paint  in  a  tube,  so 
long  and  heated  and  bitter  had  been  the  contro 
versy  over  it.  They  might  all  be  artists,  but  they 
were  of  a  hundred  opinions  as  to  the  exact  mean 
ing  of  right  and  wrong,  and  they  could  wrangle 
over  mediums  until  the  German  student  looked 
up  in  reproof  from  his  columns  of  advertisements 
and  the  Romans  shrugged  their  shoulders  at  the 
curious  manners  and  short  tempers  of  the  for- 
46 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

estiere.  But  there  was  one  point  upon  which  I 
never  knew  them  not  to  be  of  one  mind,  and  this 
was  the  supreme  importance  of  art.  If  I  ven 
tured  to  disagree — which  I  was  far  too  timid  to 
do  often — they  were  down  upon  me  like  a  flash, 
abusing  me  for  being  so  blind  as  not  to  see  the 
truth  in  Rome,  of  all  places,  where  of  a  tremen 
dous  past  nothing  was  left  but  the  work  of  the 
masters  who  built  and  adorned  the  city,  or  who 
sang  and  chronicled  its  splendours. 

IV 

The  noise  of  their  talk  is  still  loud  in  my  ears, 
but  many  of  the  talkers  have  grown  dim  in  my 
memory.  Of  some  of  the  older  men  I  cannot 
recall  the  faces,  not  even  the  names ;  some  of  the 
younger  I  remember  better,  partly  I  suppose  be 
cause  they  were  young  and  starting  out  in  life 
with  us,  partly  because  one  or  two  later  on  made 
their  names  heard  of  by  many  people  outside  of 
the  Nazionale  and  far  beyond  Rome. 

I  could  not  easily  forget  the  young  Architect 
who  was  then  getting  ready  to  conquer  Philadel 
phia — to  borrow  a  phrase  from  Zola,  as  seems 
but  appropriate  in  writing  of  the  Eighties — for 
which  great  end  all  the  knowledge  of  the  Beaux- 
Arts  could  not  have  served  him  as  well  as  his  con- 

47 


NIGHTS 

viction  that  the  architecture  of  Europe  had 
waited  for  him  to  discover  it.  He  had  never  been 
abroad  before  and  he  could  not  believe  that  any 
body  else  had.  He  would  come  to  our  little  corner 
from  his  prowls  in  Rome  and  tell  men,  who  had 
lived  there  for  more  years  than  he  had  hours,  all 
about  the  churches  and  palaces  and  galleries,  like 
a  new  Columbus  revealing  to  his  astonished  audi 
ence  the  wonders  of  a  New  World.  And  it  amused 
me  to  see  how  patiently  the  older  men  listened, 
sparing  his  illusions,  no  doubt  because  they  heard 
in  his  ardent,  confident,  decidedly  dictatorial 
voice  the  voice  of  their  own  youth  calling.  He 
carried  his  convictions  home  with  him  unspoiled, 
and  his  first  building — a  hospital  or  something 
of  the  kind — was  a  monument  to  his  discoveries, 
a  record  of  his  adventures  among  the  master 
pieces  of  Europe,  beginning  on  the  ground  floor 
as  the  Strozzi  Palace,  developing  into  various 
French  castles,  and  finishing  on  the  top  as  a 
Swiss  chalet,  atrocious  as  architecture,  but  amus 
ing  as  autobiography.  All  his  buildings  were 
more  or  less  reminiscent,  and  told  again  in  stone 
the  story  so  often  told  in  words  at  the  Nazionale, 
for  Death  was  kind  and  claimed  him  before  he 
had  ceased  to  be  the  discoverer  to  become  himself. 
Donoghue  too  has  gone,  Donoghue  the  sculp- 
48 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

tor  who  as  I  knew  Mm  in  Home  was  so  overflow 
ing  with  life,  so  young  that  I  felt  inclined  to 
credit  him  with  the  gift  of  immortal  youth,  so 
big  and  handsome  and  gay  that  wherever  he  went 
laughter  went  with  him.  He  too  was  a  discov 
erer,  but  his  discovery  was  of  Paris  and  the  Latin 
Quarter.  It  had  filled  a  year  between  Chicago, 
where  he  had  been  Oscar  Wilde's  discovery,  and 
Rome,  and  he  had  had  time  to  work  off  his  first 
fantastic  exuberance  as  discoverer  before  I  met 
him.  "Donoghue  is  all  right,"  they  would  say 
of  him  at  the  Nazionale;  "he  has  got  past  the 
brass  buttons  and  pink  swallow  tail  stage,  even 
if  he  does  cling  to  low  collars  and  tight  pants  and 
spats." 

Certainly,  he  had  got  so  far  as  to  think  he 
ought  to  be  beginning  to  work,  and  he  was  in 
despair  because  he  could  not  find  in  Rome  a  youth 
as  beautiful  as  himself  to  pose  for  his  Young 
Sophocles.  To  listen  to  him  was  to  believe  that 
Narcissus  had  come  to  life  again.  We  would 
meet  him  during  our  afternoon  rambles  in  all 
sorts  of  out-of-the-way  places,  when  he  would 
stop  and  take  half  an  hour  to  assure  us  he  hadn't 
time  to  stop,  he  was  hunting  for  a  model  he  had 
just  heard  of,  and  then  he  would  drop  into  the 
Nazionale  at  night  to  report  his  want  of  progress, 

4  49 


NIGHTS 

for  no  model  ever  came  up  to  Ms  standard.  He 
referred  to  his  own  beauty  with  the  frank  sim 
plicity  and  vanity  of  a  child — a  real  Post-Im 
pressionist;  not  one  by  pose,  for  there  was  not 
a  trace  of  pose  in  him.  I  wish  I  could  say  how 
astonishing  he  was  to  me.  Life  has  since  thrown 
many  young  artists  and  writers  my  way  and  I 
am  used  to  their  conceits  and  affectations  and 
splendid  belief  in  themselves.  But  my  experience 
then  was  of  the  most  limited  and  bound  by  Phila 
delphia  convention,  and  I  cannot  imagine  a 
greater  contrast  than  between  the  Philadelphia 
youth  to  whom  I  was  accustomed,  talking  of  the 
last  reception  and  the  next  party  over  his  chicken 
salad  at  the  Dancing  Class,  and  Donoghue  talking 
dispassionately  of  his  own  surpassing  beauty  over 
a  small  cup  of  coffee  at  the  Nazionale. 

Donoghue  was  a  child,  not  merely  in  his 
vanity,  but  in  everything,  with  the  schoolboy's 
sense  of  fun.  I  never  knew  him  happier  than  the 
evening  he  hurried  to  the  cafe  from  his  visit  to 
the  Coliseum  by  moonlight  to  tell  us  of  his  joke 
on  the  Americans  he  found  waiting  there  in 
silence  for  the  guide's  announcement  that  the 
moon  was  in  the  proper  place  for  their  proper 
emotion.  A  friend  was  with  him. 

' '  And  I  said :  'Sprichst  du  Deutsch  ?'  very  loud 
50 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

as  we  passed,"  was  Donoghue's  story.  "And  he 
answered  as  loud  as  lie  could:  'Nichts!  Nichts!' 
And  I  said:  'Zwei  Bier/  and  of  course  the 
Americans  took  us  for  Germans.  Then  we  hid 
in  the  shadows  a  little  further  on  and  we  both 
yelled  together  at  the  top  of  our  voices,  '  Three 
cheers  for  Cleveland!'  and  the  Americans 
jumped,  and  they  forgot  the  moon,  and  they 
wouldn't  listen  to  the  guide,  and  I  tell  you  it  was 
just  great." 

I  was  not  overcome  myself  with  the  wit  or 
humour  of  the  jest,  but  Donoghue  was,  and  he 
roared  with  laughter  until  none  of  us  could  help 
roaring  with  him  in  sheer  sympathy.  He  was 
as  enchanted  with  his  method  of  learning  Italian. 
He  was  reading  Wilkie  Collins  and  Bret  Harte  in 
an  Italian  translation,  and  when  he  yawned  in 
our  faces  and  left  the  cafe  early,  it  was  because 
the  night  before  the  Dago's  Woman  in  White  or 
Luck  of  Roaring  Camp  had  kept  him  up  until 
long  after  dawn,  though  really  he  knew  it  was  a 
waste  of  time  since  anybody  had  only  to  get  him 
self  half  seas  over  and  he'd  talk  any  darned 
lingo  in  the  world. 

He  joined  us  less  often  after  he  gave  up  the 
hopeless  hunt  for  the  model  who  never  was  found 
and  whom  it  would  have  been  useless  anyway 

51 


NIGHTS 

to  find,  for  Donoghue  always  spent  his  quarter's 
allowance  the  day  he  got  it,  and  most  models 
could  not  wait  three  months  to  be  paid.  To  this 
conclusion  he  came  soon  after  the  first  of  the 
year  and  settled  down  seriously  to  posing  for 
himself  and,  as  the  world  knows,  the  Young 
Sophocles  was  finished  in  the  course  of  time  and 
a  very  fine  statue  it  is  said  to  be.  But  even  if 
he  did  desert  our  table  he  would  still  seem  to 
me  in  memory  the  centre  of  the  little  group 
gathered  about  it,  had  it  not  been  for  Forepaugh. 
Of  course  his  name  was  not  Porepaugh — 
though  something  very  like  it — but  Porepaugh 
answers  my  every  purpose.  For  though  I  did 
know  his  name  I  did  not  know  then,  and  I  do  not 
know  now,  who  he  was  and  why  he  was.  I  do  not 
think  anybody  ever  knew  anything  about  him  ex 
cept  that  he  was  Porepaugh,  which  meant,  ac 
cording  to  his  own  reckoning,  the  most  wonderful 
person  on  earth.  He  was  one  of  the  sort  of  men 
whose  habit  is  to  turn  up  wherever  you  may  hap 
pen  to  be,  in  whatever  part  of  the  world,  with  no 
apparent  reason  for  being  there  except  to  talk  to 
you, — the  last  time  we  met  was  in  a  remote  cor 
ner  of  Kensington  Gardens  in  London,  where  he 
took  up  the  talk  just  where  we  had  left  off  at  the 
Nazionale  in  Rome — and  as  it  is  years  since  he 
52 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

has  turned  up  anywhere  to  talk  to  us,  I  fear 
he  has  joined  the  Philadelphia  Architect  and 
Donoghue  where  he  will  talk  no  more. 

In  sheer  physical  power  of  speech  he  was  with 
out  a  rival  and  none  surpassed  him  in  apprecia 
tion  of  his  eloquence.  His  interest  never  flagged 
so  long  as  he  held  the  floor,  though  when  we 
wanted  him  to  listen  to  us,  he  did  not  attempt  to 
conceal  his  indifference.  We  could  not  tell  him 
anything,  for  there  was  nothing  about  which  he 
did  not  know  more  than  we  could  hope  to.  He,  at 
any  rate,  had  no  doubt  of  his  own  omniscience. 
Judging  from  the  intimate  details  with  which  he 
regaled  us,  he  was  equally  in  the  confidence  of  the 
Vatican  and  the  Quirinal,  equally  at  home  with 
the  Blacks  and  the  Whites.  The  secrets  of  the 
Roman  aristocracy  were  his,  he  was  the  first  to 
hear  the  scandals  of  the  foreign  colony.  The  opera 
depended  upon  his  patronage  and  balls  languished 
without  him,  though  I  could  never  understand 
how  or  why,  so  rarely  did  he  leave  us  to  enjoy 
them.  Every  archaeologist,  every  scholar,  every 
historian  in  Rome  appealed  to  him  for  help,  and 
as  for  art,  it  was  folly  for  others  to  pretend  to 
speak  of  it  in  his  presence.  He  called  himself 
an  artist  and  for  a  time  he  used  to  go  with  J.  to 
Gigi's,  the  life  school  where  artists  then  in  Rome 

53 


NIGHTS 

often  went  of  an  afternoon  to  draw  from  the 
model.  But  J.  never  saw  him  there  with  as  much 
as  a  scrap  of  paper  or  a  pencil  in  his  hands,  and 
nobody  ever  saw  him  at  work  anywhere.  For 
what  he  did  not  do  he  made  up  by  telling  us  of 
what  he  might  do.  His  were  the  pictures  un- 
painted  which,  like  the  songs  unsung,  are  always 
the  best.  He  condescended  to  approve  of  the  Old 
Masters,  assured  that  the  masterpieces  he  might 
choose  to  produce  must  rank  with  theirs,  but  he 
never  forgot  the  great  gulf  fixed  between  him 
self  and  the  Modern  Masters,  whose  pictures  were 
worthy  of  his  approval  only  when  he  had  been 
their  inspiration.  It  was  fortunate  for  American 
Art  that  scarcely  an  American  artist  could  be 
named  whom  Forepaugh  had  not  inspired.  And 
if  he  praised  Abbey  and  Millet  more  than  most, 
it  was  because  he  had  posed  for  both  and  could 
answer  for  it  that  Millet's  porch,  or  studio,  or 
dining-room,  which  had  had  the  honour  of  serv 
ing  as  his  background,  was  as  true  as  the  figure 
of  himself  set  against  it. 

Like  all  talkers  who  know  too  much,  Fore 
paugh  had,  what  Carlyle  called,  a  terrible  faculty 
for  developing  into  a  bore.  Some  of  our  little 
group  would  run  when  they  saw  him  at  the  door, 
others  took  malicious  pleasure  in  interrupting 
54 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

him  and  suddenly  changing  the  conversation  in 
the  hope  to  catch  him  tripping.  But  out  of  all 
such  tests  he  came  triumphantly.  I  never 
thought  him  more  wonderful  than  the  evening 
when  somebody  abruptly  began  to  talk  about 
Theosophy  in  the  middle  of  one  of  his  confidences 
about  the  Italian  Court.  It  was  no  use.  With 
out  stopping  to  take  breath,  at  once  Porepaugh 
began  to  tell  us  the  most  marvellous  theosophical 
adventures,  which  he  knew  not  by  hearsay,  but 
because  he  had  passed  through  them  himself.  We 
might  express  an  opinion :  he  stated  facts.  And 
it  seemed  that  he  had  no  more  intimate  friend 
than  Sinnett,  and  that  to  Sinnett  he  had  con 
fessed  his  scepticism,  asking  for  a  sign,  a  manifes 
tation,  and  that  one  afternoon  when  they  were 
smoking  over  their  coffee  and  cognac  after  lunch 
in  Sinnett 's  chambers,  then  on  the  third  floor 
of  a  house  near  the  Oxford  Street  end  of  Bond 
Street — Porepaugh  was  carefully  exact  in  his 
details — Sinnett  smiled  mysteriously  but  said 
nothing  except  to  warn  him  to  hold  on  tight  to 
the  table.  And  up  rose  the  table,  with  the  litter 
of  coffee  cups,  cigars,  and  cognac,  up  rose  the 
two  chairs,  one  at  either  end  with  Sinnett  and 
Porepaugh  sitting  on  them,  and  away  they 
floated  out  of  the  open  window — it  was  a  June 

55 


NIGHTS 

afternoon — and  along  Bond  Street,  above  the 
carriages  and  the  hansoms  and  omnibuses  and 
the  people  as  far  as  Piccadilly,  and  round  the 
lamp  post  by  Egyptian  Hall,  up  Bond  Street 
again,  and  in  at  the  window.  "Hold  on,"  said 
Sinnett,  and  "I  never  held  on  to  anything  as 
tight  in  my  life  as  I  did  to  that  table, ' '  said  Fore- 
paugh  in  conclusion. 

He  always  reminded  me  of  the  man  who  so 
annoyed  my  Uncle,  Charles  Godfrey  Leland,  by 
always  knowing,  doing,  or  having  everything 
better  or  bigger  than  anybody  else.  "Why,  if  I 
were  to  tell  him  I  had  an  elephant  in  my  back 
yard,7'  my  Uncle  used  to  say,  "he  would  at  once 
invite  me  to  see  the  mastodon  in  his. ' '  Forepaugh 
had  a  mastodon  up  his  sleeve  for  everybody  else's 
elephant. 


If  Forepaugh  gave  us  a  great  deal  of  informa 
tion  we  had  no  possible  use  for  and  talked  us  to 
despair,  he  was  really  a  good  fellow  whom  we 
should  have  missed  from  our  table.  And  it  was 
through  him  J.  and  I  were  first  made  welcome  in 
that  one  house  open  to  us,  to  which  I  have  been 
all  this  time  in  coming.  For  it  was  Forepaugh 
who  told  Vedder  we  were  in  Rome,  and  Vedder, 
56 


By  Courtesy  of  Houghton  Mifflin  Company 

ELIHU  VEDDER 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

once  he  knew  it,  would  not  hear  of  our  shutting 
his  door  in  our  own  faces,  nor  would  Mrs.  Vedder, 
whatever  the  condition  of  our  wardrobe. 

Vedder  may  have  revealed  many  things  in  his 
recent  Digressions,  but  not  the  extent  of  the  hos 
pitality  he  and  his  wife  showed  to  the  American 
who  was  a  stranger  in  Rome,  where,  even  then, 
they  had  been  long  at  home.  Mrs.  Vedder  carried 
her  amiability  to  the  point  of  climbing  our  six 
flights  of  stairs  and  calling  on  me  in  the  rooms 
that  suited  us  admirably  for  our  work  but  were 
less  adapted  to  afternoon  receptions,  and  she 
would  have  gone  further  and  shown  me  how  to 
adapt  them  by  moving  every  bit  of  furniture 
from  where  it  was  and  arranging  it  all  over  again. 
Not  the  least  part  of  her  friendliness  was  not  to 
mind  when  I  did  not  fall  in  with  her  plans,  as 
I  couldn't,  since  so  long  as  the  sun  shone  in  at 
the  windows  all  was  right  with  the  rooms  as  far 
as  I  could  see.  I  was  in  the  absurd  stage  of  in 
dustry  when  I  did  not  care  where  my  Roman 
furniture  stood  so  long  as  my  Roman  tasks  got 
done.  Even  our  padrona  told  me  her  surprise 
that,  foreigner  as  I  was,  I  seemed  to  do  as  much 
work  as  she  did,  which  I  accepted  as  a  compli 
ment.  After  that  first  attempt  Mrs.  Vedder  did 
not  return  to  climb  our  six  flights,  but  she  would 

57 


NIGHTS 

not  let  us  off  from  climbing  her  four  or  five. 

Often  as  we  took  advantage  of  their  hospital 
ity,  we  never  found  the  Vedders  alone  and,  chiefly 
American  as  was  the  group  at  their  fireside,  it 
was  never  without  a  foreigner  or  two.  The  first 
person  we  were  introduced  to  on  the  first  visit 
was  the  Englishman  who  would  have  deserted 
us  in  the  Ghetto  had  we  let  him  have  his  way,  and 
who,  when  he  saw  us,  looked  as  if  he  wished  the 
Vedders  had  learned  to  be  less  indiscriminate  in 
their  hospitality.  We  had  the  satisfaction  of 
knowing  that  we  made  him  supremely  uncom 
fortable.  He  frowned  upon  us  then  as  he  con 
tinued  to  all  through  the  winter.  He  could  not 
forgive  us  for  having  found  him  out  and  was 
evidently  afraid  we  were  going  to  tell  everybody 
about  it.  He  was  something  very  learned  and 
was  occupied  in  writing  a  book  on  Ancient  Rome ; 
later  he  became  something  more  important  at 
South  Kensington.  But  no  degree  of  learning 
and  importance  helped  him  to  forget,  or  anyway 
to  forgive.  At  chance  meetings  years  afterwards 
in  London  he  frowned,  as  no  doubt  he  would  still 
had  he  not  long  since  gone  to  the  land  where  I 
hope  all  frowns  are  smoothed  from  his  frowning 
brow. 

If  he  frowned,  there  was  another  Englishman 
58 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

who  smiled :  an  elderly  man  with  the  imperturb 
able  serenity  of  a  Buddha.  He  also  had  written 
books,  I  believe.  I  remember  articles  by  him,  with 
art  for  subject,  in  the  Portfolio  at  a  time  when 
everybody  had  taken  to  writing  about  art,  and  I 
think  his  name  was  Davies.  But  it  would  be 
more  in  character  to  forget  that  he  ever  worked 
or  had  a  name.  When  I  was  in  Eome  he  had 
risen  above  activity  and  toil  to  the  contemplative 
life  and,  I  suppose,  to  the  income  that  made  it 
possible.  One  night  he  explained  his  philosophy 
to  me.  Men  could  not  be  happy  without  sunshine, 
he  thought.  The  sun  was  house,  food,  clothes, 
furniture,  identity,  everything,  and  as  most  of 
the  year  in  England  sunshine  was  not  to  be  had 
at  any  price,  he  had  come  to  live  in  Eome  where 
almost  all  the  year  it  was  his  for  nothing.  He 
sat  on  the  Pincian  or  in  other  gardens  during 
the  day,  doing  nothing  in  the  sunshine — that  was 
living.  And  he  urged  me  to  follow  his  example 
and  not  to  wait  until  half  my  life  had  been  wasted 
in  the  pursuit  of  happiness  where  it  was  not  to  be 
found.  He  may  have  been  right,  but  I  never 
needed  to  become  a  philosopher  to  value  the 
virtue  of  indolence, — my  trouble  is  that  I  have 
never  had  the  money  to  pay  for  it.  Any  man  has 
the  ability  to  do  nothing,  a  great  authority  has 

59 


NIGHTS 

said,  and  I  can  answer  for  one  woman  who  has 
more  than  her  fair  share  of  it.  I  have  always 
envied  the  North  American  Indians  for  their 
enjoyment  of  what  it  seems  Burke  attributed  to 
them :  "the  highest  boon  of  Heaven,  supreme  and 
perpetual  indolence." 

As  regular  a  visitor  was  a  huge  long-bearded 
Norwegian  who  looked  a  prophet  and  was  an 
artist,  and  who  spent  most  of  the  winter  in  the 
study  of  Marion  Crawford's  novels,  I  cannot 
imagine  why,  as  they  roused  him  to  fury. 

" Marion  Crawford/'  he  would  thunder  at  us 
as  if  somehow  we  were  responsible,  "Bah!  He 
is  a  weak  imitator  of  Bulwer,  that  is  all,  and  he 
has  not  Bulwer 's  power  of  construction.  He  is 
not  Bulwer.  No.  He  is  a  weakling.  Bah!" 

My  only  quarrel  with  Marion  Crawford's 
books  was  that  they  never  excited  strong  emotion 
in  me,  one  way  or  the  other,  and  I  was  so  puzzled 
by  his  excitement  that  I  remember  I  went  to  the 
trouble  of  getting  out  Mr.  Isaacs  and  A  Roman 
Singer  from  Piali's  Library  in  the  Piazza  di 
Spagna,  that  centre  of  learning  and  literature 
for  the  English  in  Rome  where,  one  day  when  I 
asked  for  Pepys's  Diary,  they  offered  me  Marcus 
Ward's.  A  new  course  of  Marion  Crawford  left 
me  as  puzzled  as  ever  for  the  reason  of  the  Nor- 
60 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

wegian's  rage,  and  I  was  the  more  impressed 
with  the  possibilities  of  a  temperament  that  could 
heat  itself  to  such  a  degree  at  so  lukewarm  a  fire. 
We  were  as  certain  to  find  this  fiery  Norse 
man  and  the  two  Englishmen  any  night  we  called 
as  Vedder  himself.  Other  men  came  and  went, 
amongst  them  a  few  Italians  and  Frenchmen  and 
more  Americans,  Coleman  for  one  among  them, 
but  none  could  have  appeared  as  regularly,  so 
much  fainter  is  the  impression  they  have  left  with 
me.  Naturally,  they  were  mostly  artists  and  at 
Vedder  ?s,  as  at  the  cafe,  the  talk  was  chiefly  of 
art.  There  was  little  of  his  work  to  see,  for  his 
studio  was  some  distance  from  his  apartment. 
But  it  was  enough  to  see  Vedder  himself  or,  for 
that  matter,  enough  to  hear  him.  In  his  own 
house  he  led  the  talk,  even  Forepaugh  having 
small  chance  against  him.  He  was  as  prolific,  a 
splendidly  determined  and  animated  talker.  It 
was  stimulating  just  to  watch  him  talk.  He  was 
never  still,  he  rarely  sat  down,  he  was  always 
moving  about,  walking  up  and  down,  at  times 
breaking  into  song  and  even  dance.  He  was  then 
in  his  prime,  large,  with  a  fine  expressive  face, 
and  as  American  in  his  voice,  in  his  manner,  in 
his  humour  as  if  he  had  never  crossed  the 
Atlantic.  The  true  American  never  gets  Euro- 

61 


NIGHTS 

V 

peanized,  nor  does  lie  want  to,  however  long  he 
may  stay  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
When  I  was  with  Vedder,  Broadway  always 
seemed  nearer  than  the  Corso. 

He  had  recently  finished  the  illustrations  for 
the  Rubaiyat  and  the  book  was  published  while 
we  were  in  Rome.  It  was  never  long  out  of  his 
talk.  He  would  tell  us  the  history  of  every  design 
and  of  every  model  or  pot  in  it.  He  exulted  in 
the  stroke  of  genius  by  which  he  had  invented  a 
composition  or  a  pose.  I  have  heard  him  describe 
again  and  again  how  he  drew  the  flight  of  a  spirit 
from  a  model,  outstretched  and  flopping  up  and 
down  on  a  feather  bed  laid  upon  the  studio  floor, 
until  she  almost  fainted  from  fatigue,  while  he 
worked  from  a  hammock  slung  just  above.  I 
recall  his  delight  when  a  friend  of  Fitzgerald's 
sent  him  Fitzgerald's  photograph  with  many 
compliments,  asking  for  his  in  return.  And  he 
rejoiced  in  the  story  of  Dr.  Chamberlain  filling 
a  difficult  tooth  for  the  Queen  and  all  the  while 
singing  the  praises  of  the  Eubaiyat  until  she 
ordered  a  copy  of  the  edition  de  luxe.  In  look 
ing  back,  I  always  seem  to  see  Mrs.  Vedder  past 
ing  notices  into  a  scrap  book,  and  to  hear  Vedder 
declaiming  Omar's  quatrains  and  describing  his 
own  drawings.  There  was  one  evening  when  he 
62 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

came  to  a  dead  stop  in  his  walk  and  his  talk,  and 
shaking  a  dramatic  finger  at  us  all,  said : 

"I  tell  you  what  it  is.  I  am  not  Vedder.  I 
am  Omar  Khayyam!" 

"No,"  drawled  the  voice  of  a  disgusted  artist 
who  had  not  got  a  word  in  for  more  than  an  hour, 
1 '  No,  you  're  not.  You  're  the  Great  I  Am ! ' ' 

Vedder  laughed  with  the  rest  of  us,  but  I  am 
not  sure  he  liked  it.  He  could  and  did  enjoy  a 
joke,  even  if  at  his  expense.  I  remember  his 
delight  one  night  in  telling  the  story  of  an  old 
lady  who  had  visited  his  studio  during  the  day 
and  who  sat  so  long  in  front  of  one  of  his  pict 
ures  he  thought  it  was  having  its  effect,  but 
whose  only  comment  at  the  end  of  several 
minutes  was:  "That's  a  pretty  frame  you  have 
there!"  He  was  sensitive  to  criticism,  how 
ever,  though  he  carried  it  off  with  a  laugh. 
Clarence  Cook  was  one  of  the  critics  of  his  Omar 
who  offended  him. 

"It's  funny,"  Vedder  said,  "all  my  life  I've 
hurt  Clarence's  feelings.  He  always  has  been 
sure  I  have  done  my  work  for  no  other  reason 
than  to  irritate  him,  and  now  that's  the  way  he 
feels  about  the  Omar." 

The  laugh  was  not  so  ready  when  Andrew 
Lang — I  think  it  was  Lang — wrote  that  Vedder 's 

63 


NIGHTS 

Omar  Khayyam  was  not  of  Persia,  but  of  Skane- 
ateles.  And  after  I  suggested  that  it  was  really 
of  Rome,  and  some  mistaken  friend  at  home  sent 
my  article  to  Vedder,  I  never  thought  him  quite 
so  cordial. 

VI 

And  so  the  winter  passed.  For  us  there  was 
always  a  refuge  from  our  cold  rooms  at  the  cafe 
or  at  Vedder's,  and  it  was  seldom  we  did  not 
profit  by  it. 

Occasionally  during  our  rambles  we  stumbled 
unexpectedly  upon  old  friends  "  doing  Italy'7  and 
genuinely  glad  to  see  us,  as  we  were  to  see  them, 
inviting  us  to  their  hotels  at  every  risk  of  the 
disapproval  of  manager  and  porters  and  waiters ; 
and  so  powerful  was  the  influence  of  Rome  and 
the  cafe  that  now  the  marvel  was  to  sit  and  listen 
to  talk  about  Philadelphia,  and  where  everybody 
was  going  for  the  summer,  and  who  was  getting 
married,  and  who  had  died,  and  what  Philadel 
phia  was  thinking  and  doing,  as  if,  after  all, 
there  were  still  benighted  people  in  the  world 
who  believed  not  in  art,  but  in  Philadelphia  as 
of  supreme  importance. 

Occasionally  we  made  new  friends  outside  of 
our  pleasant  cafe  life.  I  have  forgotten  how, 
64 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

though  I  have  not  forgotten  it  was  in  Rome, 
thanks  to  a  letter  of  introduction  from  Dr. 
Garnett  of  the  British  Museum,  that  we  first  met 
Miss  Harriet  Waters  Preston,  who,  for  her  part, 
had  already  introduced  me  to  Mistral — how  many 
Americans  had  heard  of  Mistral  before  she  trans 
lated  Mireio  ? — and  who  now  accepted  us,  cycling 
tweeds  and  all,  notwithstanding  the  shock  they 
must  have  been  to  the  admirably  appointed 
pension  where  she  stayed.  She  also  climbed  our 
six  flights,  her  niece  and  collaborator,  Miss  Louise 
Dodge,  with  her,  probably  both  busy  that  winter 
collecting  facts  for  their  Private  Life  of  the 
Romans,  and  where  could  they  have  found  a  more 
perfect  background  for  the  past  they  were  study 
ing  than  when  they  looked  down  from  our  win 
dows  over  Rome,  to  the  Campagna  beyond,  and 
upon  the  horizon  the  shining  line  that  we  knew 
was  the  Mediterranean, — over  all  the  beauty  that 
has  not  changed  in  the  meanwhile,  though  old 
streets  and  old  villas  and  old  slums  have  van 
ished.  And  at  these  times,  in  the  talk,  not  Phila 
delphia,  but  literature  was  for  a  while  art's  rival. 
And  there  were  days  when  we  played  truant 
and  climbed  down  in  the  morning's  first  freshness 
from  the  high  room  overlooking  Rome  and  the 
work  that  had  to  be  done  in  it,  and  loafed  all  day 
5  65 


NIGHTS 

in  Roman  galleries  and  at  Eoman  ceremonies,  or 
strayed  to  places  further  afield — Tivoli,  Albano, 
Ostia,  Marino,  Rocca  di  Papa, — getting  back  to 
Rome  with  feet  too  tired  to  take  us  anywhere  ex 
cept  up  our  six  flights  again.  And  there  were 
nights  when  the  affairs  of  Rome  drew  us  from 
the  cafe.  I  remember  once  our  little  group  inter 
rupted  their  interminable  arguments  long  enough 
to  see  the  Tiber  in  flood,  down  by  the  Bipetta, 
where  people  were  going  about  in  boats,  and 
Rome  looked  like  the  Venice  to  which  I  had  then 
never  been,  and  we  met  King  Humbert  and  Queen 
Margherita  in  his  American  trotting  wagon  driv 
ing  down  alone  so  as  to  show  their  sympathy,  for, 
whatever  they  may  not  have  done,  they  always 
appeared  in  person  when  their  people  were  in 
trouble:  not  so  many  weeks  before  we  had 
watched  the  enthusiasm  with  which  the  Romans 
greeted  King  Humbert  on  his  return  from  visit 
ing  the  cholera-stricken  town  of  Naples.  And  I 
remember  on  Befana  Night  we  adjourned  to  the 
Piazza  Navona  to  blow  horns  and  reed  whistles 
into  other  people's  ears  and  to  have  them  blown 
into  ours.  For  the  humours  of  the  Carnival  there 
was  no  need  to  leave  the  cafe,  where  one  Pul- 
cinello  after  another  broke  into  our  talk  with 
witticisms  that  kept  the  cafe  in  an  uproar,  and 
66 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

for  me  destroyed  whatever  sentiment  there  might 
have  been  in  the  thought  that  this  was  my  last 
night  in  Rome — the  last  of  the  friendly  nights 
of  talk  in  the  Nazionale  to  which  we  always  re 
turned  no  matter  how  far  we  might  occasionally 
stray  from  it — the  friendly  nights  of  talk  when 
I  learned  my  folly  in  ever  having  believed  that 
anything  in  the  world  mattered,  that  anything 
in  the  world  existed,  save  art. 

Pulcinello,  the  newest  of  our  Roman  friends, 
went  with  us  from  Rome,  following  us  to  Naples, 
a  familiar  face  to  lighten  our  homesickness  for 
the  rooms  full  of  sunshine  at  the  top  of  the  high 
house  on  the  top  of  the  high  hill,  and  for  the  blue 
plush  and  the  gilding  and  the  mirrors  and  the 
talk  of  the  Nazionale. 

And  Pulcinello  went  with  us  to  Pompeii,  re 
appearing  during  our  nights  at  the  Albergo  del 
Sole,  that  most  delightful  and  impossible  of  all 
the  inns  that  ever  were.  It  may  have  vanished 
in  the  quarter  of  a  century  that  has  passed  since 
the  February  day  I  came  to  it,  when  the  sky  was 
as  blue  as  the  sea,  and  a  soft  cloud  hung  over 
Vesuvius,  and  flowers  were  sweet  in  the  land — 
can  anyone  who  ever  smelt  it  forget  the  sweet 
ness  of  the  flowering  bean  in  the  wide  fields  near 
the  Bay  of  Naples  ?  But  Pompeii  could  never  be 

67 


NIGHTS 

the  same  without  the  Sole.  And  it  was  made  for 
our  shabbiness,  its  three  tumbled-down  little 
houses  ranged  round  the  three  sides  of  an  un 
kempt,  mud-floored  court ;  our  bedroom  without 
lock  or  latch  and  with  a  mirror  cracked  from 
side  to  side  like  the  Lady  of  Shalott's,  though 
for  other  reasons ;  the  dining-room  with  earthen 
floor,  walls  decorated  by  a  modern-primitive 
fresco  of  the  padrone  holding  a  plate  of  mac- 
cheroni  in  one  hand  and  a  flask  of  Lachrima 
Christi  in  the  other,  a  central  column  spreading 
out  branches  like  a  tree  and  bearing  for  fruit 
row  upon  row  of  still  unopened  bottles,  a  door 
free  to  all  the  stray  monks  and  beggars  of 
Pompeii — to  all  the  fowls  too,  including  the 
gorgeous  peacock  that  strolled  in  after  its  even 
ing  walk  with  the  young  Swiss  artist  on  the  flat 
roof  of  the  inn  where,  together,  they  went  before 
dinner  to  watch  the  sunset. 

Throughout  dinner,  at  the  head  of  the  long 
table  where  we  sat  with  the  Swiss  artist  and  an 
old  German  professor  of  art  and  an  older  Italian 
archaeologist,  the  talk,  as  at  the  Nazionale,  was  of 
art,  so  that  it  also,  like  Pulcinello,  crying  his 
jests  through  the  window  or  at  our  elbow,  made 
me  feel  at  home.  While  we  helped  ourselves  from 
that  amazing  dish  into  which  you  stuck  a  fork 
68 


NIGHTS:   IN  ROME 

and  pulled  out  a  bit  of  chicken  or  duck  or  beef  or 
mutton  or  sausage ;  while  the  old  professor  and 
archaeologist  absent-mindedly  stretched  a  hand 
to  the  column  behind  them,  and  plucked  from  it 
bottle  after  bottle  of  wine ;  while  the  beggars 
whined  at  the  open  door,  and  the  monks  begged 
at  our  side,  and  Pulcinello  capered  and  jested 
and  sang;  while  the  American  tourists  at  the 
other  end  of  the  table  deplored  the  disorder  and 
noise  until  we  sent  them  the  longest  and  most 
expensive  way  up  Vesuvius  to  get  rid  of  them; 
while  the  fowls  fought  for  the  crumbs ; — the  talk 
was  still  of  art  and  again  of  art,  in  the  end  as  in 
the  beginning.  I  might  not  understand  half  of 
it,  coming  as  it  did  in  a  confused  torrent  of  Ger 
man,  Italian,  French,  and  English,  but  the  nights 
at  the  Sole,  like  the  nights  at  the  Nazionale,  made 
this  one  truth  clear :  that  nothing  matters  in  the 
world,  that  nothing  exists  in  the  world,  save  art. 


Ill 

NIGHTS 

IN  VENICE 


IN  VENICE 

I 

WE  reached  Venice  at  an  unearthly 
hour  of  a  March  morning  and  the 
first  thing  I  knew  of  it  somebody  was 
shouting,  "Venezia!"  and  I  was 
startled  from  a  sound  sleep,  and  porters  were 
scrambling  for  our  bags,  and  we  were  stumbling 
after  them,  up  a  long  platform,  between  a  crowd 
of  men  in  hotel  caps  yelling :  "DcmieU!"  "Britan 
nia!"  and  I  hardly  heard  what,  out  into  a  fog  as 
impenetrable  as  night  or  London.  The  muffled, 
ghostly  cries  of  "gundola!  gundola!"  from  in 
visible  gondoliers  on  invisible  waters  would  have 
sent  me  back  into  the  station  even  had  there  been 
a  chance  to  find  so  modest  a  hotel  as  the  Casa 
Kirsch  open  so  preposterously  early,  and  my  first 
impressions  of  Venice  were  gathered  in  the  freez 
ing,  foggy  station  restaurant  where  J.  and  I  drank 
our  coffee  and  yawned,  and  I  would  have  thought 
Ruskin  a  fraud  with  his  purple  passage  describ 
ing  the  traveller's  arrival  in  Venice  upon  which 
I  had  based  my  expectations,  had  I  been  wide 
enough  awake  to  think  of  anything  at  all,  and  the 
hours  stretched  themselves  into  centuries  before 

73 


NIGHTS 

a  touch  of  yellow  in  the  fog  suggested  a  sun  shin 
ing  in  some  remote  world,  and  we  crawled  under 
the  cover  of  one  of  the  dim  black  boats  that 
emerged  vaguely,  a  shadow  from  the  shadows. 

I  had  looked  forward  to  my  first  gondola  ride 
for  that  "little  first  Venetian  thrill"  that  Venice 
owes  to  the  stranger.  But  I  did  not  thrill,  I 
shivered  with  cold  and  damp  and  fog  as  the 
gondola  pushed  through  the  yellow  gloom  in  the 
sort  of  silence  you  can  feel,  and  tall  houses  tow 
ered  suddenly  and  horribly  above  us,  and  strange 
yells  broke  the  stillness  before  and  behind,  when 
another  black  boat  with  a  black  figure  at  the  stern, 
came  out  of  the  gloom,  scraped  and  bumped  our 
side,  and  was  swallowed  up  again. 

And  after  we  were  on  the  landing  of  the  Casa 
Kirsch,  and  up  in  our  rooms,  and  the  fog  lifted, 
and  the  sun  shone,  and  we  looked  out  of  our 
windows  with  all  Venice  in  our  faces,  and  J.  took 
me  to  see  the  town,  my  impressions  were  still 
foggy  with  sleep.  For,  from  Pompeii,  where 
there  had  been  work,  to  Venice  where  there  was 
to  be  more,  we  had  hurried  by  one  of  those  day- 
and-night  flights  to  which  J.  has  never  accus 
tomed  me,  the  hurried,  crowded  pauses  at  Naples 
and  Orvieto  and  Florence  and  Pisa  and  Lucca 
and  Pistoia  turning  the  journey  into  a  beautiful 
74 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

nightmare  of  which  all  I  was  now  seeing  became 
but  a  part:  the  Riva,  canals,  sails,  Bersaglieri, 
the  Ducal  Palace,  the  Bridge  of  Sighs,  St.  Mark's, 
the  Piazza,  gondolas,  women  in  black,  white  sun 
light,  pigeons,  tourists,  the  Campanile,  following 
one  upon  another  with  the  inconsequence  of 
troubled  dreams.  And  then  we  were  on  the  Rialto 
and  J.  was  saying  "Of  course  you  know  that?" 
and  I  was  answering  "Of  course,  the  Bridge  of 
Sighs !"  and  the  many  years  between  have  not 
blunted  the  edge  of  his  disgust  or  my  remorse. 
But  my  disgrace  drove  me  back  to  the  Casa 
Kirsch,  to  sleep  for  fifteen  blessed  hours  before 
looking  at  one  other  beautiful  thing  or  troubling 
my  head  about  what  we  were  to  do  with  our  days 
and  our  nights  in  Venice. 

II 

What  we  were  to  do  with  our  days  settled 
itself  the  next  morning  as  soon  as  I  woke.  For 
Venice,  out  of  my  window,  was  rising  from  the 
sea  with  the  dawn,  everything  it  ought  to  have 
been  the  morning  before,  and  I  had  no  desire  to 
move  from  a  room  that  looked  down  upon  the 
Eiva,  and  across  to  San  Giorgio,  and  beyond  the 
island-  and  sail-strewn  lagoon  to  the  low  line  of 

75 


NIGHTS 

the  Lido,  and  above  to  the   vastness  of  the 
Venetian  sky. 

Nor  was  there  trouble  in  providing  for  our 
nights.  Before  I  left  home  a  romantic  friend  had 
pictured  me  in  Venice,  wrapped  in  black  lace, 
forever  floating  in  a  gondola  under  the  moon. 
But  my  Roman  winter  had  taught  me  how  much 
more  likely  the  gas-light  of  some  little  trattoria 
and  cafe  was  to  shine  upon  me  in  my  well-worn 
tweeds,  my  education  having  got  so  far  advanced 
that  any  other  end  to  my  day  of  work  could  not 
seem  possible.  The  only  question  was  upon  which 
of  the  many  little  trattorie  and  cafes  in  Venice 
our  choice  should  fall,  and  this  was  decided  for 
us  by  Duveneck,  whom  wre  ran  across  that  same 
morning  in  the  Piazza,  and  who  told  us  that  he 
slept  in  the  Casa  Kirsch,  dined  at  the  Antica 
Panada,  and  drank  coffee  at  the  Orientale,  which 
was  as  much  as  to  say  that  we  might  too  if  we 
liked.  And  of  course  we  liked,  for  it  is  a  great 
compliment  when  a  man  in  Venice,  or  any  Italian 
town, — especially  if  he  is  of  the  importance  and 
distinction  to  which  Duveneck  had  already  at 
tained, — makes  you  free  to  join  him  at  dinner 
and  over  after-dinner  coffee.  It  is  more  than  a 
compliment.  It  launches  you  in  Venice  as  to  be 
presented  at  court  launches  you  in  London. 
76 


Painting  by  Joseph  R.  De  Camp 

FRANK  DUVENECK 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

We  began  that  night  to  dine  at  the  Panada 
and  drink  coffee  at  the  Orientate,  and  we  kept 
on  dining  at  the  Panada  and  drinking  coffee  at 
the  Orientale  every  night  we  were  in  Venice ;  ex 
cept  when  it  was  a  festa  and  we  followed  Duv- 
eneck  to  the  Calcino,  where  various  Royal  Acad 
emicians  sustained  the  respectability  Ruskin  gave 
it  by  his  patronage  and  Symonds  tried  to  live  up 
to ;  or  when  there  was  music  in  the  Piazza  and, 
happy  to  do  whatever  Duveneck  did,  we  went 
with  him  to  the  Quadri  or  Florian's;  or  when  it 
stormed,  as  it  can  in  March,  and  all  day  from  my 
window  I  had  looked  down  upon  the  dripping 
Eiva  and  the  wind-waved  Lagoon  and  lines  of 
fishing  boats  moored  to  the  banks,  and  no  living 
creatures  except  the  gulls,  and  the  little  white 
woolly  dogs  on  the  fishing  boats  covered  with 
sails,  and  the  sailors  miserably  huddled  together, 
and  gondoliers  in  yellow  oilskins,  and  the  Bersag- 
lieri  in  hoods — what  the  Bersaglieri  were  doing 
there  even  in  sunshine  was  one  of  the  mysteries 
of  Venice; — then  we  went  with  Duveneck  no 
further  than  the  kitchen  of  the  Casa  Kirsch,  for 
he  hated,  as  we  hated,  the  table  d'hote  from 
which,  there  as  everywhere,  German  tourists  were 
talking  away  every  other  nationality. 

The  kitchen  was  a  huge  room,  with  high  ceil- 

77 


NIGHTS 

ing,  and  brass  and  copper  pots  and  pans  on  the 
whitewashed  walls,  and  a  dim  light  about  the 
cooking  stove,  and  dark  shadowy  corners.  The 
padrona  laid  the  cloth  for  us  in  an  alcove  oppo 
site  the  great  fireplace,  while  she  and  her  family 
sat  at  a  table  against  the  wall  to  the  right,  and 
the  old  cook  ate  at  a  bare  table  in  the  middle,  and 
the  maid-servant  sat  on  a  stool  by  the  fire  with 
her  plate  in  her  lap,  and  the  man-servant  stood 
in  the  corner  with  his  plate  on  the  dresser.  Hav 
ing  thus  expressed  their  respect  for  class  dis 
tinctions,  they  felt  no  further  obligation,  but  they 
all  helped  equally  in  cooking  and  serving,  talked 
together  the  whole  time,  quarrelled,  called  each 
other  names,  and  laughed  at  the  old  man's  stories 
told  in  the  Venetian  which  I  only  wish  I  had 
understood  then  as  well  as  I  did  a  few  weeks 
later,  when  it  was  too  late,  for,  with  the  coming 
of  spring,  there  were  no  storms  to  keep  us  from 
the  Panada. 

Just  where  the  Panada  was  I  would  not  at 
tempt  to  say;  not  from  any  desire  to  keep  it 
secret,  which  would  be  foolish,  for  Baedeker  long 
since  found  it  out;  but  simply  because  I  could 
not  very  well  show  the  way  to  a  place  I  never 
could  find  for  myself.  I  knew  it  was  somewhere 
round  the  corner  from  the  Piazza,  but  I  never 
78 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

rounded  that  corner  alone  without  becoming  in 
volved  in  a  labyrinth  of  little  calli.  Nor  would 
I  attempt  to  say  why  the  artists  chose  it  and  why, 
because  they  did,  we  should,  for  it  was  then  the 
dirtiest,  noisiest,  and  most  crowded  trattoria  in 
Venice,  though  the  last  time  I  was  there,  years 
afterwards,  it  was  so  spick  and  span,  with 
another  room  and  more  waiters  to  relieve  the 
congestion,  that  I  could  not  believe  it  really  was 
the  Panada  and,  with  the  inconsistency  natural 
under  the  circumstances,  did  not  like  it  half  so 
well. 

No  matter  whether  we  got  there  early  or  late, 
the  Panada  was  always  full.  As  soon  as  we  sat 
down  we  began  our  dinner  by  wiping  our  glasses, 
plates,  forks,  spoons,  and  knives  on  our  napkins, 
making  such  a  habit  of  it  that  I  remember  after 
wards  at  a  dinner-party  in  London  catching  my 
self  with  my  glass  in  my  hand  and  stopping  only 
just  in  time,  while  Duveneck,  on  another  occa 
sion,  got  as  far  as  the  silver  before  he  was  held 
up  by  the  severe  eye  of  his  hostess.  Probably 
it  was  because  nobody  could  hear  what  anybody 
said  that  everybody  talked  together.  I  cannot 
recall  a  moment  when  stray  musicians  were  not 
strumming  on  guitars  and  mandolins,  and  the 
oyster  man  was  not  shrieking:  "Ostreche! 

79 


NIGHTS 

Fresche!  Ostreche!"  though  nobody  paid  the 
least  attention  to  him  or  ever  bought  one  of  his 
oysters.  And  above  the  uproar  was  the  continu 
ous  cry:  "Ecco  me!  Vengo  subitol  Mezzo 
Verona!  Due  Calomai!  Vengo  subitol  Ecco 
me!"  of  the  waiters,  who,  though  they  never 
ceased  to  announce  their  coming,  were  so  slow  to 
come  that  many  diners  brought  a  course  or  two 
in  their  pockets  to  occupy  them  during  the 
intervals. 

The  little  Venetian  at  the  next  table  was  sure 
to  produce  a  bunch  of  radishes  while  he  waited 
for  his  soup;  on  market  days,  when  there  was 
more  of  a  crowd  than  ever,  few  of  the  many 
baked  potatoes  eaten  at  almost  every  table  had 
seen  the  inside  of  the  Panada's  oven ;  often  the 
shops  that  fill  the  Venetian  calli  with  the  per 
petual  smell  of  frying  and  where  the  brasses  and 
the  blue-and-white  used  to  shine,  were  patron 
ized  on  the  way — if  dinner  has  to  be  collected  in 
the  streets,  no  town,  even  in  Italy,  offers  such 
facilities  as  Venice.  From  Minestra  to  fruit  and 
cheese,  the  Venetian  in  a  few  minutes'  walk  may 
pick  up  a  substantial  dinner  and  carry  it  to  the 
rooms  or  the  street  corner  where  it  is  his  habit 
to  dine.  Vance,  the  painter,  who  sometimes 
favoured  us  at  our  table  with  liis  company,  went 
80 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

further  and,  after  he  had  taken  off  his  coat  and 
put  on  his  hat  and  emptied  his  pockets,  seldom 
troubled  the  establishment  to  provide  him  with 
more  than  a  glass,  a  plate,  a  knife,  and  a  fork, 
for  the  price  of  a  quinto  of  Verona.  His  first, 
and  as  it  turned  out  his  last,  more  extravagant 
order,  was  the  event  of  the  season.  The  padrone 
discussed  it  with  him  and  a  message  was  sent  to 
the  cook  that  the  dish  was  di  bistecca.  When  it 
came  it  was  not  cooked  enough  to  suit  Vance. 
A  second  was  cooked  too  much.  The  third  was 
done  to  a  turn.  In  the  bill,  however,  were  the 
three,  and  voices  were  lowered,  mandolins  and 
guitars  were  stilled,  the  oyster  man  forgot  his 
shriek,  during  the  five  awful  minutes  when 
Vance  and  the  padrone  had  it  out.  After  that 
Vance  made  another  trattoria  the  richer  by  his 
daily  quinto. 

J.  and  I  had  our  five  minutes  with  the  padrone 
later  on  once  when  Rossi,  our  waiter,  was  so  slow 
that  our  patience  gave  out  and  we  shook  the  dust 
of  the  Panada  from  our  feet.  But  we  could  not 
shake  off  Rossi.  He  had  arrived  with  our  dinner 
just  as  we  were  vanishing  from  the  door  and  was 
made  to  pay  for  it.  After  that  his  leisure  was 
spent  in  trying  to  make  us  pay  him  back  and  he 
would  appear  at  our  bedroom  door,  or  waylay  us 
6  81 


NIGHTS 

on  the  Riva,  or  follow  us  into  the  Orientate,  or 
run  us  down  in  the  Piazza,  demanding  the  money 
as  a  right,  begging  for  it  as  a  charity,  reducing 
it  by  a  centesimo  every  time  until  we  had  only  to 
wait  long  enough  for  the  debt  to  be  wiped  out. 
But  this  was  at  the  end  of  our  stay  in  Venice, 
and  months  of  dining  at  the  Panada  had  passed 
before  then. 

Ill 

I  would  be  as  puzzled  to  explain  the  attraction 
of  the  Orientate  on  the  Riva,  unless  it  was  the 
opportunity  it  offered  for  economy.  In  the 
Piazza,  at  the  Quadri  and  Florian's,  which  are 
to  the  other  cafes  of  Venice  what  St.  Mark's  is 
to  the  other  churches,  coffee  was  twenty  centesimi 
and  the  waiter  expected  five  more,  but  at  the 
Orientate  it  was  eighteen  and  the  waiter  was 
satisfied  with  the  change  from  twenty,  which 
meant  for  us  the  saving  every  night  of  almost 
half  a  cent.  The  Orientate  was  by  comparison 
as  quiet  and  deserted  as  the  Panada  was  crowded 
and  noisy.  Outside,  tables  looked  upon  the 
Lagoon  and  the  fagade  of  San  Giorgio,  white  in 
the  night.  In  a  big,  new,  gilded  room  sailors  and 
sergeants  played  checkers  and  more  serious 
Venetians  worked  out  dismal  problems  in  chess. 
But  Duveneck's  corner  was  in  the  older,  shabby, 
82 


Etching  by  Joseph  Pennell 

THE  CAFE  ORIENTALS,  VENICE 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

stuffy,  low-ceilinged  room,  and  having  once 
settled  there  we  never  wanted  to  move.  As  a 
rule  we  shared  it  with  only  an  elderly  English 
man  and  his  son  who  read  the  Standard  in  the 
opposite  corner — after  our  race  with  them  to  the 
cafe,  the  winners  getting  the  one  English  paper 
first — and  we  were  seldom  intruded  upon  or  in 
terrupted  except  by  the  occasional  visit  of  the 
caramei  man  with  his  brass  tray  of  candied  fruit, 
impaled  on  thin  sticks,  like  little  birds  on  a 
skewer,  which  led  us  into  our  one  extravagance. 
Had  the  old  room  been  seedier  and  duller — 
dull  our  company  never  was — I  still  would  have 
seen  it  through  the  glamour  of  youth  and  thought 
it  the  one  place  in  which  to  study  Venice  and 
Venetian  life.  But  nobody  who  ever  sat  there 
with  us  could  have  complained  of  dulness  so  long 
as  Duveneck  presided  at  our  table.  In  Duve- 
neck's  case  I  cannot  help  breaking  my  golden 
rule  never  to  speak  in  print  of  the  living — rules 
were  made  to  be  broken.  And  why  shouldn't  I? 
I  might  as  well  not  write  at  all  about  our  nights 
in  Venice  as  to  leave  him  out  of  them,  he  who 
held  them  together  and  fashioned  them  into 
what  they  were.  In  the  Atlantic,  as  a  make 
shift,  I  called  him  Inglehart,  the  disguise  under 
which  he  figures  in  one  of  Ho  wells 's  novels. 

83 


NIGHTS 

But  why  not  call  him  boldly  by  his  name  when 
Inglehart  is  the  thinnest  and  flimsiest  of  masks, 
as  friends  of  his  were  quick  to  tell  me,  and  Duv- 
eneck  means  so  much  more  to  all  who  know — and 
all  who  do  not  know  are  not  worth  bothering 
about.  It  was  only  yesterday  at  San  Francisco 
that  the  artists  of  America  gave  an  unmistakable 
proof  of  what  their  opinion  of  Duveneck  is  now. 
In  the  Eighties  "the  boys"  already  thought  as 
much  of  him  and  a  hundred  times  more. 

Duveneck,  as  I  remember  him  then — I  have 
seen  him  but  once  since — was  large,  fair,  golden- 
haired,  with  long  drooping  golden  moustache,  of 
a  type  apt  to  suggest  indolence  and  indifference. 
As  he  lolled  against  the  red  velvet  cushions  smok 
ing  his  Cavour,  enjoying  the  talk  of  others  as 
much  as  his  own  or  more — for  he  had  the  talent 
of  eloquent  silence  when  he  chose  to  cultivate  it — 
his  eyes  half  shut,  smiling  with  casual  benevo 
lence,  he  may  have  looked  to  a  stranger  incapable 
of  action,  and  as  if  he  did  not  know  whether  he 
was  alone  or  not,  and  cared  less.  And  yet  he  had 
a  big  record  of  activity  behind  him,  young  as  he 
was ;  he  always  inspired  activity  in  others,  he  was 
rarely  without  a  large  and  devoted  following. 
He  it  was  who  drew  "the  boys"  to  Munich,  then 
from  Munich  to  Florence,  and  then  from  Florence 
84 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

to  Venice,  and  "the  boys"  have  passed  into  the 
history  of  American  Art  and  the  history  of 
Venice — wouldn't  that  give  me  away  and  explain 
who  he  was  if  I  called  him  Inglehart  dozens  of 
times  over  ?  And  he  also  it  was  who  packed  them 
off  again  before  they  learnt  how  easy  it  is  to  be 
content  in  Venice  without  doing  anything  at  all, 
though  I  used  to  fancy  that  he  would  have  been 
rather  glad  to  indulge  in  that  content  himself. 
How  far  he  was  from  the  pleasant  Venetian  habit 
of  idling  all  day,  his  Venetian  etchings,  at  which 
he  was  working  that  spring — the  etchings  that 
on  their  appearance  in  London  were  the  innocent 
cause  of  a  stirring  chapter  in  The  Gentle  Art — 
are  an  enduring  proof.  And  I  knew  a  good  deal 
of  what  was  going  on  in  his  studio  at  the  time,  for 
J.  spent  many  busy  hours  with  him  there,  while 
I,  left  to  my  own  devices,  stared  industriously 
from  the  windows  of  the  Casa  Kirsch,  making 
believe  I  was  gathering  material,  or  strolled  along 
the  Riva  pretending  it  was  to  market  for  my  mid 
day  meal,  though  the  baker  was  almost  next  door, 
and  the  man  from  whom  I  bought  the  little  dried 
figs  that  nowhere  are  so  dried  and  shrivelled  up 
as  in  Venice,  was  seldom  more  than  a  minute 
away.  I  can  see  now,  when  I  consider  how  my 
Venetian  days  were  spent,  that  I  came  perilously 

85 


NIGHTS 

near  to  sinking  to  the  deepest  depths  of  Venetian 
idleness  myself. 

We  were  never  alone  with  Duveneck  at  the 
Orientate.  The  American  Consul  was  sure  to 
drop  in,  as  he  had  for  so  many  years  that  half  his 
occupation  would  have  gone  if  he  hadn't  dropped 
in  any  longer.  Martin  joined  us  because  he  loved 
to  argue  anybody  into  a  temper  and,  as  he  was  an 
awful  bore,  succeeded  with  most  people.  He 
could  drive  me  to  proving  that  white  was  black, 
to  overturning  all  my  most  cherished  idols,  or  to 
forgetting  my  timidity  and  laying  down  the  law 
upon  any  point  of  art  he  might  bring  up.  Duv 
eneck  alone  refused  to  be  roused  and  Martin, 
who  could  not  understand  or  accept  his  failure, 
was  forever  coming  back,  making  himself  a 
bigger  bore  than  ever,  by  trying  again.  But 
Shinn  was  the  only  man  I  ever  knew  to  put  Duv 
eneck  into  something  like  a  temper,  and  that  was 
by  asking  him  deferentially  one  night  if  he  did 
not  think  St.  Mark's  a  very  fine  church — the  next 
minute,  however,  calming  him  down  b}^  inviting 
him  out l '  in  my  gandler . ' ' 

Arnold  was  as  regular  in  attendance.     He 

found  the  cafe  as  comfortable  a  place  to  sleep  in 

as  any  other.    Like  Sancho  Panza  he  had  a  talent 

for  sleeping.    He  had  made  his  name  and  fame 

86 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

as  one  of  the  Harvard  baseball  team  in  I  will  not 
say  what  year,  and  sleep  had  been  his  chief  occu 
pation  ever  since.  No  end  of  stories  were  going 
the  round  of  the  studios  and  cafes — he  invited 
them  without  wanting  it  or  meaning  to.  He  was 
supposed  to  be  in  Venice  to  study  with  Duveneck, 
at  whose  studio  he  was  said  to  arrive  regularly 
at  the  same  hour  every  morning.  And  as  regu 
larly  he  was  snoring  before  he  had  been  sitting  in 
front  of  his  easel  for  ten  minutes.  During  his 
nap,  Duveneck  would  come  round  and  shake  him 
and  before  he  slept  again  put  a  touch  to  the  study 
and,  as  Arnold  promptly  dozed  off,  would  work 
on  it  until  it  was  finished,  and  unless  it  slid  down 
the  canvas  with  the  quantity  of  bitumen  Arnold 
used — there  was  one  story  of  the  beautiful  eyes  in 
a  beautiful  portrait,  before  they  could  be  stopped, 
sliding  into  the  chin  of  the  pretty  girl  who  was 
posing — Arnold,  waking  up  eventually,  would 
carry  off  the  painting  unconscious  that  he  had 
not  finished  it  himself.  Nobody  can  say  how 
many  Duvenecks  are  masquerading  at  home  as 
Arnolds  while  their  owners  wonder  why  Arnold 
has  never  since  done  any  work  a  tenth  as  good. 

The  one  thing  that  roused  him  was  baseball, 
and  he  was  in  fine  form  on  the  afternoons  when 
he  and  a  few  other  enthusiasts  spent  an  hour  or 

87 


NIGHTS 

so  on  the  Lido  for  practice.  The  Englishmen  did 
not  believe  in  the  prodigies  they  heard  of  him  as 
a  baseball  player.  It  wasn't  easy  for  anybody  to 
believe  that  a  man  who  was  always  tumbling  off 
to  sleep  on  the  slightest  provocation  could  play 
anything  decently.  But  I  was  told  that  one  day 
he  was  wide  enough  awake  to  be  irritated,  and  he 
bet  them  a  dinner  he  could  pitch  the  swell  British 
cricketer  among  them  three  balls  not  any  one  of 
which  the  Briton  could  catch.  And  on  Easter 
Monday  they  all  went  over  to  the  Lido.  The 
Briton  asked  for  a  high  ball :  it  skimmed  along 
near  the  ground  and  then  rose  over  his  head  as 
he  stooped  for  it.  He  asked  for  a  low  one :  it  came 
straight  for  his  nose  and,  when  he  dodged  it, 
dropped  and  went  between  his  legs.  He  asked 
for  a  medium  one :  it  curved  away  out  to  the  right, 
he  rushed  for  it,  it  curved  back  again  and  took 
him  in  his  manly  bosom.  The  rest  of  the  Britons 
and  "the  boys,"  they  say,  enjoyed  the  dinner 
more  than  he  did.  Such  was  the  affair  as  it  was 
described  to  me  and  confirmed  by  gossip.  I  pre 
tend  to  no  authority  on  a  subject  I  understand 
so  little  as  balls  and  the  pitching  of  them. 

A  better  contrast  to  Arnold  could  not  have 
been  found  than  the  artist  with  the  part  Spanish, 
part  German  name  who  called  himself  a  French- 
88 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

man,  and  who  aimed  to  give  Ms  pose  the 
mystery  that  crept,  or  bounded  when  encour 
aged,  into  his  incessant  talk.  I  am  afraid  his 
chief  encouragement  came  from  me.  The  others 
were  as  irritated  by  his  dabbling  in  magic  as  most 
of  us  had  been  in  Rome  by  Forepaugh's  theo- 
sophic  adventures.  But  he  amused  me;  he  did 
not  deal  in  the  prose  of  his  brand  of  magic,  the 
Black,  of  which  so  much  was  beginning  to  be 
heard,  and  still  more  was  to  be  heard,  in  Paris. 
He  was  all  innuendo  and  strange  hints  and  whis 
pered  secrets,  and  I-could-if-I-woulds.  One  of  my 
recent  winters  had  been  devoted,  not  to  dabbling 
in  magic,  for  which  I  have  not  the  temperament, 
but  to  reading  the  literature  of  magic  or  of  all 
things  psychical,  and  I  could  then,  though  I  could 
not  now,  have  passed  a  fairly  good  examination 
in  the  modern  authorities,  from  Madame  Bla- 
vatsky  to  Louis  Jacolliot.  Therefore  I  proved  a 
sympathetic  listener  and  heard,  for  my  pains, 
of  the  revival  of  old  religions,  and  above  all  of 
old  rites,  and  of  his  dignity  as  high-priest,  a 
figure  of  mystery  and  command  moving  here  and 
there  among  shadowy  disciples  in  shadowy 
sanctuaries.  For  one  sunk  such  fathoms  deep  in 
mystery  he  was  surprisingly  concerned  for  the 
outward  sign.  Like  Huysmans's  hero,  he  believed 

89 


NIGHTS 

in  the  significance  of  the  material  background, 
entertaining  me  with  a  detailed  description  of 
his  apartment  in  Paris,  and  I  have  not  yet  lost 
the  vision  he  permitted  me  of  a  bedroom  hung 
and  painted  with  scarlet,  and  of  himself  en 
shrined  in  it,  magnificent  in  scarlet  silk  pajamas. 
Probably  it  was  to  deceive  the  world  that  he 
carried  a  tiny  paint-box.  I  never  saw  him  open  it. 
But  most  constant  of  our  little  party  was 
Jobbins,  our  one  Englishman,  who  came  in  late  to 
the  Orientate — where,  or  if,  he  dined  none  of  us 
could  say — with  the  stool  and  canvas  and  paint 
box  he  had  been  carrying  about  all  day  from  one 
campo,  or  calle,  or  candle,  to  another,  in  search 
of  a  subject.  Jobbing's  trouble  was  that  he  had 
passed  too  brilliantly  through  South  Kensington 
to  do  the  teaching  for  which  he  was  trained,  or 
to  be  willing  to  do  anything  but  paint  great  pict 
ures  the  subjects  for  which  he  could  never  find; 
his  mistake  was  to  want  to  paint  them  in  Venice 
where  there  is  nothing  to  paint  that  has  not  been 
painted  hundreds,  or  thousands,  or  millions  of 
times  before ;  and  his  misfortune  was  not  to  seek 
in  adversity  the  comfort  and  hope  which  the 
philosopher  believes  to  be  its  reward.  He  had 
become,  as  a  consequence,  the  weariest  man  who 
breathed.  It  made  me  tired  to  look  at  him.  Later, 
90 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

he  was  forced  to  abandon  his  high  ambition  and 
he  accepted  a  good  post  as  teacher  somewhere  in 
India.  But  he  lived  a  short  time  to  enjoy  it  and  I 
am  sure  he  was  homesick  for  Venice,  and  the 
search  after  the  impossible,  and  the  old  days  when 
he  was  so  abominably  hard  up  that  even  J.  and  I 
were  richer.  Of  the  complete  crash  by  which 
we  all  gained — including  the  man  who  got  the 
Whistler  painted  on  the  back  of  a  Jobbins  panel — 
I  still  have  reminders  in  a  brass  plaque  and 
bits  of  embroideries  hung  up  on  our  walls  and 
brocades  made  into  screens,  which  J.  bought  from 
him  to  save  the  situation,  at  the  risk  of  creating 
a  new  one  from  which  somebody  would  have  to 
save  us. 

For  all  his  weariness,  Jobbins  looked  ridicu 
lously  young.  He  insisted  that  this  was  what 
lost  him  his  one  chance  of  selling  a  picture.  He 
was  painting  in  the  Frari  a  subject  which  he 
vainly  hoped  was  his  own,  when  an  American 
family  of  three  came  and  stared  over  his  shoulder. 

"Why,  it's  going  to  be  a  picture !"  the  small 
child  discovered. 

"And  he  such  a  boy  too!"  the  mother 
marvelled. 

"Then  it  can't  be  of  any  value,"  the  father 
said  in  the  loud  cheerful  voice  in  which  American 

91 


NIGHTS 

and  English  tourists  in  Venice  make  their  most 
personal  comments,  convinced  that  nobody  can 
understand,  though  every  other  person  they  meet 
is  a  fellow  countryman.  A  story  used  to  be  told 
of  Bunney  at  work  in  the  Piazza,  on  his  endless 
study  of  St.  Mark's  for  Ruskin,  one  bitter  winter 
morning,  when  three  English  girls,  wrapped  in 
furs,  passed.  One  stopped  behind  him : 

"Oh  Maud!  Ethel!"  she  called,  "do  come 
back  and  see  what  this  poor  shivering  old  wretch 
is  doing." 

The  talk  in  our  corner  of  the  Orientale  kept 
us  in  the  past  until  I  began  to  fear  that,  just  as 
some  people  grow  prematurely  grey,  so  J.  and  I, 
not  a  year  married,  had  prematurely  reached  the 
time  for  creeping  in  close  about  the  fire — or  a 
cafe  table — and  telling  grey  tales  of  what  we  had 
been.  It  was  a  very  different  past  from  that 
which  tourists  were  then  bullied  by  Ruskin  into 
believing  should  alone  concern  them  in  Venice — 
indeed,  my  greatest  astonishment  in  this  astonish 
ing  year  was  that,  while  the  people  who  were 
not  artists  but  posed  as  knowing  all  about  art  did 
nothing  but  quote  Ruskin,  artists  never  quoted 
him,  and  never  mentioned  him  except  to  show 
how  little  use  they  had  for  him.  But  then,  as  I 
was  beginning  to  find  out,  it  is  the  privilege  of 
92 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

the  artist  to  think  what  he  knows  and  to  say  what 
he  thinks.  We  were  none  of  us  tourists  at  our 
little  table,  we  were  none  of  us  seeing  sights, 
being  far  too  busy  doing  the  work  we  were  in 
Venice  to  do;  and  no  matter  what  Ruskin  and 
Baedeker  taught,  "the  boys"  gave  the  date  which 
overshadowed  for  us  every  other  in  Venetian 
history.  Nothing  that  had  happened  in  Venice 
before  or  after  counted,  though  " the  boys"  them 
selves  were  in  their  turn  a  good  deal  overshad 
owed  by  Whistler,  who  had  been  there  with  them 
for  a  while. 

It  was  extraordinary  how  the  Whistler  tra 
dition  had  developed  and  strengthened  in  the 
little  more  than  four  years  since  he  had  left 
Venice.  I  had  never  met  him  then,  though  J. 
had  a  few  months  before  in  London.  I  hardly 
hoped  ever  to  meet  him;  I  certainly  could  not 
expect  that  the  day  would  come  when  he  would 
be  our  friend,  with  us  constantly,  letting  us  learn 
far  more  about  him  and  far  more  intimately  than 
from  all  the  talk  at  a  cafe  table  of  those  who 
already  knew  him,  accepted  him  as  a  master,  and 
loved  him  as  a  man.  But  had  my  knowledge  of 
him  come  solely  from  those  months  in  Venice  I 
should  still  have  realized  the  power  of  his  per 
sonality  and  the  force  of  his  influence.  He  seemed 

93 


NIGHTS 

to  pervade  the  place,  to  colour  the  atmosphere. 
He  had  stayed  in  Venice  only  about  a  year.  In 
the  early  Eighties  little  had  been  written  of  him 
except  in  contempt  or  ridicule.  But  to  the  artist 
he  had  become  as  essentially  a  part  of  Venice,  his 
work  as  inseparable  from  its  associations,  as  the 
Venetian  painters  like  Carpaccio  and  Tintoretto 
who  had  lived  and  worked  there  all  their  lives  and 
about  whom  a  voluminous  literature  had  grown 
up,  culminating  in  the  big  and  little  volumes  by 
Ruskin  upon  which  the  public  crowding  to  Venice 
based  their  artistic  creed.  During  those  old 
nights  I  heard  far  more  of  the  few  little  inches 
of  Whistler's  etchings  and  of  Whistler's  pastels 
than  of  the  great  expanse  of  Tintoretto's  Para 
dise  or  of  Carpaccio 's  decorations  in  the  little 
church  of  San  Giorgio  degli  Schiavoni.  The  fact 
made  and  has  left  the  greater  impression  be 
cause  the  winter  in  Rome  had  not  worn  off,  for 
me,  the  novelty  of  artists'  talk  or  quite  accus 
tomed  me  to  their  point  of  view,  to  their  sur 
prising  independence  in  not  accepting  the  cur 
rent  and  easy  doctrine  that  everything  old  is 
sacred,  everything  modern  insignificant.  Be 
cause  a  painter  happened  to  paint  a  couple  of 
hundred  years  or  more  ago  did  not  place  him 
above  their  criticism;  because  he  happened  to 
94 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

paint  to-day  was  apt  to  make  Mm  more  interest 
ing  to  them. 

At  the  Orientate  the  talk  could  never  keep 
very  long  from  Whistler.  It  might  be  of  art — 
question  of  technique,  of  treatment,  of  arrange 
ment,  of  any  or  all  the  artist's  problems — and 
sooner  or  later  it  would  be  referred  to  what 
Whistler  did  or  did  not.  Or  the  talk  might  grow 
reminiscent  and  again  it  was  sure  to  return  to 
Whistler.  Not  only  at  the  Orientate,  but  at  any 
cafe  or  restaurant  or  house  or  gallery  where  two 
or  three  artists  were  gathered  together,  Whistler 
stories  were  always  told  before  the  meeting  broke 
up.  It  was  then  we  first  heard  the  gold-fish  story, 
and  the  devil-in-the-glass  story,  and  the  Wolkoff- 
pastel  story,  and  the  farewell-feast  story,  and  the 
innumerable  stories  labelled  and  pigeon-holed  by 
"the  boys"  for  future  use,  and  so  recently  told 
by  J.  and  myself  in  the  greatest  story  of  all — 
the  story  of  his  Life — that  it  is  too  soon  for  me 
to  tell  them  again.  Up  till  then  I  had  shared 
the  popular  idea  of  him  as  a  man  who  might  be 
ridiculed,  abused,  feared,  hated,  anything  rather 
than  loved.  But  none  of  the  men  in  Venice  could 
speak  of  him  without  affection.  "Not  a  bad 
chap,"  Jobbins  would  forget  his  weariness  to  say, 
"not  half  a  bad  chap!"  and  one  night  he  told 

95 


NIGHTS 

one  of  the  few  Whistler  stories  never  yet  told 
in  print,  except  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  where 
this  chapter  was  first  published. 

"He  rather  liked  me,"  said  Jobbins,  " liked  to 
have  me  about,  and  to  help  on  Sundays  when  he 
showed  his  pastels.  But  that  wasn't  my  game, 
you  know,  and  I  got  tired  of  it,  and  one  Sunday 
when  lots  of  people  were  there  and  he  asked  me 
to  bring  but  that  drawing  of  a  calle  with  tall 
houses,  and  away  up  above  clothes  hung  out  to 
dry,  and  a  pair  of  trousers  in  the  middle,  I  said : 
4 Have  you  got  a  title  for  it,  Whistler?'  'No,'  he 
said.  'Well,'  I  said,  'call  it  an  Arrangement  in 
Trousers/  and  everybody  laughed.  I'd  have 
sneaked  away,  for  he  was  furious.  But  he 
wouldn't  let  me,  kept  his  eye  on  me,  though  he 
didn't  say  a  word  until  they'd  all  gone.  Then  he 
looked  at  me  rather  with  that  Shakespeare  fel 
low's  Et  tu  Brute  look:  'Why,  Jobbins,  you,  who 
are  so  amiable?'  That  was  all.  No,  not  half  a 
bad  chap." 

Now  and  then  talk  of  Whistler  and ' '  the  boys ' ' 
reminded  Duveneck  of  his  own  student  days,  and 
would  lead  him  into  personal  reminiscences,  when 
the  stories  were  of  his  adventures ;  sometimes  on 
Bavarian  roads,  singing  and  fiddling  his  way 
from  village  to  village,  or  in  Bavarian  convents, 
96 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

teaching  drawing  to  pretty  novices,  receiving 
commissions  from  stern  Reverend  Mothers ;  and 
sometimes  in  American  towns  painting  the  earli 
est  American  mural  decoration  that  prepared 
the  way,  through  various  stages,  for  the  latest 
American  series  of  all — at  the  San  Francisco 
Exposition  where  Duveneck  was  acclaimed  as  the 
American  master  of  to-day.  But  in  his  story,  as 
he  told  it  to  us,  he  had  not  got  as  far  as  Florence 
when  a  new  turn  was  given  to  his  reminiscences 
and  to  our  evening  talk  by  the  descent  upon 
Venice  of  the  men  from  Munich. 

IV 

They  were  only  three — McFarlane,  Anthony 
and  Thompson,  shall  I  call  them? — but  they  had 
not  journeyed  all  the  way  from  Munich  to  talk 
about  "the  boys"  and  to  drop  sentimental  tears 
over  old  love  tales.  They  were  off  on  an  Easter 
holiday  and  meant  to  make  the  most  of  it.  Be 
cause  Duveneck  was  Duveneck  they  gave  up  the 
gayer  cafes  in  the  Piazza  to  be  with  him  in  the 
sleepy  old  Orientale.  But  they  were  not  going 
to  let  it  stay  a  sleepy  old  Orientale  if  they  could 
help  themselves.  Their  very  first  evening  Duv 
eneck  called  for  two  glasses  of  milk — to  steady 
his  nerves,  he  said,  though  he  politely  attributed 
7  97 


NIGHTS 

the  unsteadiness  not  to  this  new  excitement  but 
to  the  tea  he  had  been  drinking.  People  drifted 
to  our  room  from  outside  and  from  the  new  room 
to  see  what  the  noise  was  about,  until  there  was 
not  a  table  to  be  had.  The  old  Englishman  and 
his  son  put  down  the  Standard  and  laughed  with 
us.  The  caramei  man  went  away  with  an  empty 
tray,  I  do  believe  the  only  time  he  was  ever  bought 
out  in  his  life,  and  McFarlane  treated  us  all  to 
tamarindo  to  drink  with  the  fruit,  and  he  wound 
up  his  horrible  extravagance  by  buying  a  copy  of 
the  Venetian  paper  "the  boys"  used  to  call  the 
Barabowow.  It  was  nothing  short  of  a  Venetian 
orgy. 

Nor  did  the  transformation  end  here.  The 
men  from  Munich  were  so  smart,  especially 
McFarlane,  in  white  waistcoat,  with  a  flower  in 
his  button-hole  and  a  gold-headed  cane  in  his 
hand,  that  we  were  shocked  into  the  conscious 
ness  of  our  shabbiness.  Duveneck,  who,  until 
then,  had  been  happy  in  an  old  ulster  with  holes 
in  the  pockets  and  rips  in  the  seams,  dazzled  the 
cafe  by  appearing  in  a  jaunty  spring  overcoat. 
J.  exchanged  his  old  trousers  with  a  green  stain 
of  acid  down  the  leg  for  the  new  pair  he  had 
hitherto  worn  only  when  he  went  to  call  on  the 
Bronsons  or  to  dine  with  Mr.  Horatio  Brown, 
98 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

where  I  could  not  go  because  I  was  so  much  more 
hopelessly  unprepared  to  dine  anywhere  outside 
the  Panada  or  the  Kitchen  of  the  Casa  Kirsch. 
But  in  the  Merceria  I  could  at  least  supply  my 
self  with  gloves  and  veils,  while  Jobbins  un 
earthed  a  fresh  cravat  from  somewhere.  And 
we  began  to  feel  apologetic  for  the  dinginess  and 
general  down-at-heeledness  of  Venice  which 
bored  the  men  from  Munich  to  extinction — really 
they  were  so  bored,  they  said,  that  all  day  they 
found  themselves  looking  forward  to  the  caramei 
man  as  the  town's  one  excitement.  I  thought 
the  illuminations  on  Easter  Sunday  evening, 
when  the  Piazza  was  "a  fairyland  in  the  night," 
and  the  music  deafened  us,  and  the  Bengal  lights 
blinded  us,  would  help  to  give  them  a  livelier  im 
pression;  but,  though  they  came  with  us  to 
Florian's,  it  was  plain  they  pitied  us  for  being  so 
pleased.  \ 

They  couldn't,  for  the  life  of  them,  see  why 
the  place  had  been  so  cracked  up  by  Ruskin. 
Nothing  was  right.  The  Piazza  was  just  simply 
the  town's  meeting  place  and  centre  of  gossip, 
like  the  country  village  store,  only  on  a  more 
architectural  and  uncomfortable  scale.  The 
canals  were  breeding  holes  for  malaria.  The 
streets  wouldn't  be  put  up  with  as  alleys  at  home. 

99 


NIGHTS 

The  language  was  not  worth  learning.  At  the 
Panada,  after  we  had  given  our  order  for  dinner, 
McFarlane  would  murmur  languidly  'Lo  stesso' 
and  declare  it  to  be  the  one  useful  word  in  the 
Italian  dictionary;  to  this  Johnson  added  a 
mysterious  'Sensa  crab'  when  Rossi  suggested 
'piccoli  fees'  under  the  delusion  that  he  was  talk 
ing  English;  while  Anthony  was  quite  content 
with  the  vocabulary  the  other  two  supplied  him. 
The  climate  was  as  deplorable:  either  wet  and 
cold,  when  the  Italian  scaldino  wasn't  a  patch  on 
the  German  stove  and  a  gondola  became  a  freez 
ing  machine ;  or  warm  and  enervating  when  they 
couldn't  keep  awake. 

They  dozed  in  their  gondola,  they  yawned  in 
St.  Mark's  and  the  Ducal  Palace  and  in  all  the 
other  churches  and  palaces,  and  in  front  of  all 
the  old  doorways  and  bridges  and  boat-building 
yards  and  traghettos  and  fishing  boats  and  wells 
and  "bits"  that  Camillo,  their  gondolier,  was  in 
human  enough  to  wake  them  up  to  look  at.  The 
beauty  of  Venice  was  exaggerated,  or  if  they  did 
come  to  a  "subject"  that  made  them  pull  their 
sketch  books  out  of  their  pockets,  Camillo  was  at 
once  bothering  them  to  do  it  from  just  where 
Guardi,  or  Canaletto,  or  Rico,  or  Whistler,  or 
Ruskin,  or  some  other  old  boy  had  painted, 
100 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

etched,  or  drawn  it — Whistler  alone  had  finished 
Venice  for  every  artist  who  came  after  4iitn  fytid 
they  were  tired  of  his  very  nam£, '  and  ftpver 
wanted  to  have  his  etchings  and  pastels  'thiowrl 
in  their  faces  again.  What  they  would  like  to  do 
was  to  discover  the  Italian  town  or  village  where 
no  artist  had  ever  been  seen  and  the  word  art 
had  never  been  uttered. 

But  it  was  Venetian  painting  that  got  most 
on  their  nerves.  They  had  given  it  a  fair  chance, 
they  protested.  "Trot  out  your  Tintorettos, " 
they  said  to  Camillo  every  morning,  and  he 
carried  them  off  to  the  Palace,  and  the  Academy, 
and  more  churches  than  they  thought  there  were 
in  the  world,  and  at  last  to  the  Scuola  di  San 
Rocco.  And  there  a  solemn  man  in  spectacles 
took  them  in  hand.  They  said  to  him  too :  "Trot 
our  your  Tintorettos,"  and  he  led  them  up  to  a 
big,  dingy  canvas,  and  they  said:  "Trot  out  your 
next,"  and  they  went  the  rounds  of  them  all,  and 
they  asked,  "Where's  your  Duveneck?"  and  he 
said  he  had  never  heard  of  Duveneck,  and  they 
said,  "Why,  he's  here!"  and  they  left  him  hunt 
ing,  and  were  back  in  their  gondola  in  ten 
minutes,  and  they  guessed  they  could  do  with 
Rubens!  I  trembled  to  think  of  the  shock  to 
tourists  and  my  highly  intellectual  friends  at 

101 


NIGHTS 

home,  religiously  studying  Baedeker  and  reading 
Ruskifc,  <jduld  they  have  heard  the  men  from 
Munich  talking  of  art  and  of  Venice.  And  I  must 
have  been  painfully  scandalized  had  I  not  got  so 
much  further  on  with  my  education  as  to  have  a 
glimmering  of  the  truth  Whistler  was  trying  to 
beat  into  the  unwilling  head  of  the  British  pub 
lic — that  an  artist  knows  more  about  art  than  the 
man  who  isn't  an  artist,  and  has  the  best  right 
to  an  opinion  on  the  subject. 

Perhaps  their  disappointment  in  Venice  was 
the  reason  of  their  preoccupation  with  Munich. 
Certainly  "Now,  at  Munich "  was  the  beginning 
and  end  of  the  talk  as  "when  'the  boys'  were 
here"  had  been  before  they  came.  They  would 
not  admit  that  anything  good  could  exist  outside 
of  Munich.  I  remember  Duveneck  once  suggest 
ing  that  Paris  was  the  best  place  for  the  student, 
to  whom  it  was  a  help  just  to  see  what  was  going 
on  around  him. 

"But  what  does  go  on  round  the  student 
there ?"  McParlane  interrupted.  "It's  all  fads 
in  Paris.  What  do  they  talk  about  in  Paris  to 
day  but  values  ?  [  This,  remember,  was  more  than 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  ]  That 's  all  they  teach 
the  student,  all  they  think  of.  Look  at  Bisbing's 
picture  last  year.  They  all  raved  over  it,  said 
102 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

it  was  the  clou  of  the  Salon,  medalled  it,  bought 
it  for  the  Luxembourg,  and  I  don't  know  what 
all.  And  what  was  it? — Pale  green  sheep  in  the 
foreground,  pale  green  mountains  in  the  back 
ground,  so  pale  you  could  shoot  peas  through 
them.  That  's  what  you  have  to  do  now  to  make  a 
success  in  Paris — get  your  values  so  that  you  can 
shoot  peas  through  'em.  And  what  will  it  be  to 
morrow?  And  what  help  is  it  to  the  student, 
anyway?" 

But  one  thing  certain  is,  that  whatever  the 
fads  and  movements  in  the  Paris  studios  hap 
pened  to  be,  the  American  student  in  those  days 
did  see  what  was  going  on  in  Paris,  and  just  to 
see,  just  to  feel  it,  was,  as  Duveneck  held,  a  help, 
an  inspiration.  To-day,  living  in  his  own  pen 
sions,  studying  in  his  own  schools,  loafing  in  his 
own  clubs,  he  does  not  take  any  interest  in  what 
is  going  on  outside  of  them  and  will  talk  about 
what  "the  Frenchmen  are  doing"  as  if  he  were 
still  in  Kalamazoo  or  Oshkosh. 

"What  the  student,  in  Duveneck 's  and  McFar- 
lane's  time  saw  going  on  round  him  in  Munich 
was,  as  well  as  I  could  make  out,  chiefly  balls  and 
pageants.  To  this  day  I  cannot  help  thinking  of 
life  in  Munich  as  one  long  spectacle  and  dance. 
Duveneck,  who  could  talk  with  calmness  of  his 

103 


NIGHTS 

painting,  was  stirred  to  animation  when  lie  re 
called  the  costumes  he  had  invented  for  himself 
and  his  friends.  He  could  not  conceal  his  pride 
in  the  success  of  a  South  Sea  Islander  he  had 
designed,  the  effect  achieved  by  the  simple  means 
of  burnt  Sienna  rubbed  into  the  poor  man,  but  so 
vigorously  that  it  took  months  to  get  it  out  again, 
and  a  blanket  which  he  mislaid  towards  morning 
so  that  his  walk  home  at  dawn,  like  a  savage 
skulking  in  the  shadows,  was  a  triumph  of 
realism.  Pride,  too,  coloured  Duveneck's  account 
of  the  appearance  of  the  Socialist  Carpenter  of 
his  creation  who  made  a  huge  sensation  by  in 
citing  to  riot  in  the  streets  of  an  elaborate  Old 
Munich — the  origin  of  Old  London  and  Old  Paris 
and  all  the  sham  Old  Towns  that  Exhibitions  have 
long  since  staled  for  us.  But  his  masterpiece 
was  the  Dissipated  Gentleman,  like  all  master 
pieces  a  marvel  of  simplicity — hired  evening 
clothes,  a  good  long  roll  in  the  muddiest  gutter 
on  the  way  to  the  ball,  and  it  was  done ;  but  the 
art,  Duveneck  said,  was  in  the  rolling,  which  in 
this  case,  under  his  direction,  was  so  masterly 
that  at  the  door  the  Dissipated  Gentleman  was 
mistaken  for  the  real  thing  and,  if  friends  had  not 
come  up  in  the  nick  of  time,  the  door  would  have 
been  shut  in  his  face. 
104 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

Duveneck  was  as  enthusiastic  over  the 
Charles  V.  ball,  though  all  the  artists  of  Munich 
contributed  to  its  splendour,  working  out  their 
costumes  with  such  respect  for  truth  and  so  re 
gardless  of  cost  that  for  months  and  years  after 
wards  not  a  bit  of  old  brocade  or  lace  was  to  be 
had  in  the  antiquity  shops  of  Bavaria.  And  the 
students  were  responsible  for  the  siege  of  an  old 
castle  outside  the  town,  and  in  their  archaeological 
ardour  persuaded  the  Museum  to  lend  the  armour 
and  arms  of  the  correct  date,  and,  in  their  appre 
ciation  of  the  favour,  fought  with  so  much  re 
straint  that  the  casualties  were  a  couple  of  spears 
snapped.  And,  in  my  recollection,  their  recol 
lections  stood  for  such  truth  and  gorgeousness 
that  when  England,  years  afterwards,  took  to 
celebrating  its  past  with  pageants,  more  than 
once  I  found  myself  thinking  how  much  better 
they  order  these  things  in  Munich ! 

And  from  the  studios  came  the  inspiration 
for  that  ball  Munich  talks  of  to  this  day  in  which 
all  the  nations  were  represented.  There  was  a 
Hindu  temple,  a  Chinese  pagoda,  and  an  Indian 
wigwam.  But  the  crowning  touch  was  the 
Esquimaux  hut.  Placed  in  a  hall  apart,  at  the 
foot  of  a  great  stairway,  it  was  built  of  some  com 
position  in  which  pitch  was  freely  used,  lit  by 

105 


NIGHTS 

tallow  candles,  and  hung  with  herrings  offered 
for  sale  by  nine  Esquimaux  dressed  in  woollen 
imitation  of  skins  with  the  furry  side  turned  out. 
All  evening  the  hut  was  surrounded,  only  towards 
midnight  could  the  crowd  be  induced  to  move  on 
to  some  fresh  attraction.  In  the  moment's  lull, 
one  of  the  Esquimaux  was  tying  up  a  new  line 
of  herrings  when  he  brushed  a  candle  with  his 
arm.  In  a  second  he  was  blazing.  Another  ran 
to  his  rescue.  In  another  second  the  hut  was  a 
furnace  and  nine  men  were  in  flames,  with  pitch 
and  wool  for  fuel.  One  of  the  few  people  still 
lounging  about  the  hut,  fearing  a  panic,  gave 
the  signal  to  the  band,  who  struck  up  Carmen. 
Never  since,  McFarlane  said,  had  he  listened  to 
the  music  of  Carmen,  never  again  could  he  listen 
to  it,  without  seeing  the  burning  hut,  the  men 
rushing  out  of  it  with  the  flames  leaping  high 
above  them,  tearing  at  the  blazing  wool,  in  their 
agony  turning  and  twisting  as  in  some  wild  fan 
tastic  dance,  while  above  the  music  he  could  hear 
the  laughter  of  the  crowd,  who  thought  it  a  joke — 
a  new  scene  in  the  spectacle. 

He  snatched  a  rug  from  somewhere  and  tried 

to  throw  it  over  one  of  the  men,  but  the  man  flew 

past  to  the  top  of  the  great  stairway.    There  he 

was  seized  and  rolled  over  and  over  on  the  carpet 

106 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

until  the  flames  were  out.  He  got  up,  walked 
downstairs,  asked  for  beer,  drank  it  to  the  dregs, 
and  fell  dead  with  the  glass  in  his  hand — the  first 
to  die,  the  first  freed  from  his  agony.  Of  the  nine, 
but  two  survived.  Seven  lay  with  their  hut,  a 
charred  heap  upon  the  ground,  before  the  laugh 
ing  crowd  realized  what  a  pageant  of  horror  Pate 
had  planned  for  them. 

Munich  stories,  before  the  night  was  over,  had 
to  be  washed  down  with  Munich  beer,  which,  at 
that  time  as  still,  I  fancy,  was  best  at  Bauer's.  By 
some  unwritten  law,  inscrutable  as  the  written,  it 
was  decreed  that,  though  I  might  sit  all  evening 
the  only  woman  at  our  table  in  the  Orientale — 
of tener  than  not  the  only  woman  in  the  cafe — it 
was  not  "the  thing"  for  me  to  go  on  to  Bauer's. 
Therefore,  first,  the  whole  company  would  see 
me  home.  It  was  a  short  stroll  along  the  Riva, 
but  the  Lagoon,  dim  and  shadowy,  stretched  away 
beyond  us,  dimmer  islands  resting  on  its  waters, 
the  lights  of  the  boats  sprinkling  it  with  gold 
under  the  high  Venetian  sky  sprinkled  with  stars ; 
and  so  beautiful  was  it,  and  so  sweet  the  April 
night,  that  the  men  from  Munich  could  not  hold 
out  against  the  enchantment  of  Venice  in  spring. 
I  felt  it  a  concession  when  McFarlane  admitted 
the  loveliness  of  Venice  by  starlight,  and  his 

107 


NIGHTS 

languor  dropped  from  Mm  under  the  spell,  and 
I  knew  the  game  of  boredom  was  up  when,  in 
this  starlight,  he  decided  that,  after  all,  there 
might  be  more  in  the  Tintorettos  than  he  thought 
if  only  he  had  time  to  study  them.  But  Easter 
holidays  do  not  last  for  ever,  and  the  day  soon 
came  when  the  men  from  Munich  had  to  go  back 
to  where  all  was  for  the  best  in  the  best  of  all 
towns,  but  where  no  doubt,  on  the  principle  that 
we  always  prefer  what  we  have  not  got  at  the 
moment,  they  told  "the  fellows"  in  the  Bier  Kel- 
lars  that  only  in  Venice  was  life  worth  while,  that 
Eubens  was  dingy,  and  that  they  guessed  they 
could  do  with  Tintoretto. 


Somehow,  we  were  never  the  same  after  they 
left  us ;  not,  I  fancy,  because  we  missed  them,  but 
because  we  could  hold  out  still  less  than  they 
against  the  spring.  When  the  sun  was  so  warm 
and  the  air  so  soft,  when  in  the  little  canals 
wistaria  bloomed  over  high  brick  walls,  when 
boatloads  of  flowers  came  into  Venice  with  the 
morning,  when  at  noon  the  Eiva  was  strewn  with 
sleepers — then  indoors  and  work  became  an  im 
pertinence.  On  the  slightest  excuse  J.  and  Duv- 
eneck  no  longer  shut  themselves  in  the  studio, 
108 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

I  gave  up  collecting  material  from  my  window 
and  lunch  from  the  Riva,  Jobbins  interrupted  his 
search  and  Martin  his  argument,  the  Consul 
fought  shy  of  the  old  corner  in  the  cafe.  And  in 
the  languid  laziness  that  stole  upon  Venice,  as 
well  as  upon  us,  I  penetrated  for  the  first  time 
to  the  inner  meaning  of  the  chapter  in  his  Vene 
tian  Life  that  Howells  labels  Comincia  far 
Caldo,  the  season  when  repose  takes  you  to 
her  inner  heart  and  you  learn  her  secrets,  when 
at  last  you  know  why  it  was  an  Abyssinian  maid 
who  played  upon  her  dulcimer,  at  last  you  recog 
nize  in  Xanadu  the  land  where  you  were  born. 

There  was  never  a  festa  in  the  Piazza  that  we 
were  not  there,  watching  or  walking  with  the 
bewildering  procession  of  elegant  young  Vene 
tians,  and  peasants  from  the  mainland,  and  offi 
cers,  and  soldiers,  and  gondoliers  with  big  caps 
set  jauntily  on  their  curls,  and  beautiful  girls  in 
the  gay  fringed  shawls  that  have  disappeared 
from  Venice  and  the  wooden  shoes  that  once  made 
an  endless  clatter  along  the  Riva  but  are  heard 
no  more,  and  Greeks,  and  Armenians,  and  priests, 
and  beggars,  passing  up  and  down  between  the 
arcades  and  the  cafe  tables  that  overflowed  far 
into  the  square,  St.  Mark's  more  unreal  in  its 
splendour  than  ever  with  its  domes  and  galleries 

109 


NIGHTS 

and  traceries  against  the  blue  of  the  Venetian 
night. 

There  was  never  a  side-show  on  the  Riva  that 
we  did  not  interrupt  our  work  to  go  and  see  it ; 
whether  it  was  the  circus  in  the  little, tent,  with 
the  live  pony,  the  most  marvellous  of  all  sights 
in  Venice;  or  the  acrobats  tumbling  on  their 
square  of  carpet;  or  the  blindfolded,  toothless 
old  fortune-teller,  whose  shrill  voice  I  can  still 
hear  mumbling  "Una  volta  soltanta  per  Napoli!" 
when  she  was  asked  if  Naples,  this  coming  sum 
mer,  as  the  last,  would  be  ravaged  by  cholera. 
She  was  right,  for  in  the  town,  cleaned  out  of 
picturesqueness,  cholera  could  not  again  do  its 
work  in  the  old  wholesale  fashion. 

There  was  never  an  excursion  to  the  Islands 
that  we  did  not  join  it.  To  visit  some  of  the 
further  Islands  was  not  so  easy  in  those  days, 
except  for  tourists  with  a  fortune  to  spend  on 
gondolas,  and  we  were  grateful  to  the  occasional 
little  steamboat  that  undertook  to  get  us  there, 
though  with  a  crowd  and  noise  and  a  brass 
band,  for  all  the  world  like  an  excursion  to  Coney 
Island,  and  though  most  people,  except  the  grate 
ful  natives,  were  obediently  believing  with 
Euskin  that  it  was  the  symbol  of  the  degeneracy 
of  Venice  and  would  have  thought  themselves  dis- 
110 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

graced  forever  if  they  were  seen  on  it.  But  the 
Lagoon  was  as  beautiful  from  the  noisy,  fussy 
little  steamboat  as  from  a  gondola,  the  sails  of  the 
fishing  boats  touching  it  with  as  brilliant  colour, 
the  Islands  lying  as  peacefully  upon  its  shining 
waters,  the  bells  of  the  many  campanili  coming 
as  sweetly  to  our  ears,  the  sky  above  as  pure  and 
radiant ;  and  it  mattered  not  how  we  reached  the 
Islands,  they  were  as  enchanting  when  we  landed. 
One  wonderful  day  was  at  Torcello,  where 
nothing  could  mar  the  loveliness  of  its  solitude 
and  desolation,  its  old  cathedral  full  of  strange 
mosaics  and  stranger  memories,  the  green  space 
in  front  that  was  once  a  Piazza  tangled  with  blos 
soms  and  sweet-scented  in  the  May  sunshine,  the 
purple  hills  on  the  mainland  melting  into  the 
pale  sky.  And  a  second  day  as  wonderful  was  at 
Burano,  with  its  rose-flushed  houses  and  gardens 
and  traditions  of  noise  and  quarrels,  and  the  girls 
who  followed  the  boat  along  the  bank  and  pelted 
us  with  roses  until  Jobbins  vowed  he  would  go 
and  live  there — and  he  did,  but  a  market  boat 
brought  him  back  in  a  week.  And  other  excur 
sions  took  us  to  Chioggia,  the  canals  there  alive 
with  fishing  boats  and  the  banks  with  fishermen 
mending  their  nets;  and  to  Murano,  busy  and 
beautiful  both,  with  the  throb  of  its  glass  furnaces 

111 


NIGHTS 

and  the  peace  of  the  fields  where  the  dead  sleep ; 
and  again  and  again  to  the  Lido  where  green 
meadows  were  sprinkled  with  daisies  and  birds 
were  singing. 

More  wonderful  were  the  nights,  coming 
home,  when  the  gold  had  faded  from  sea  and 
sky,  the  palaces  and  towers  of  Venice  rising  low 
on  the  horizon  as  in  a  City  of  Dreams,  the  Lagoon 
turned  by  the  moon  into  a  sheet  of  silver,  lights 
like  great  fireflies  stealing  over  the  water,  ghostly 
gondolas  gliding  past, — then  we  were  the  real 
Lotus  Eaters  drifting  to  the  only  Lotus  Land 
where  all  things  have  rest. 

The  fussy  little  steamboat,  I  found,  could  rock 
ambition  to  sleep  as  well  as  a  gondola,  and  life 
seemed  to  offer  nothing  better  than  an  endless 
succession  of  days  and  nights  spent  on  its  deck 
bound  for  wherever  it  might  bear  us.  I  under 
stood  and  sympathized  with  the  men  who  lay 
asleep  all  day  in  the  sunshine  on  the  Eiva  and 
who  sang  all  night  on  the  bridge  below  our  win 
dows.  What  is  more,  I  envied  them  and  wished 
they  would  take  me  into  partnership.  Were  they 
not  putting  into  practice  the  philosophy  our 
ancient  friend  Davies  had  preached  to  me  in 
Rome?  But  only  the  Venetian  can  master  the 
secret  of  doing  nothing  with  nothing  to  do  it  on, 
112 


NIGHTS:   IN  VENICE 

and  if  J.  and  I  were  to  hope  for  figs  with  our 
bread,  or  even  for  bread  by  itself,  we  had  to  move 
on  to  the  next  place  where  work  awaited  us.  And 
so  the  last  of  our  nights  in  Venice  came  before 
spring  had  ripened  into  summer,  and  the  last  of 
our  mornings  when  porters  again  scrambled  for 
our  bags,  and  we  again  stumbled  after  them  up 
the  long  platform;  and  then  there  were  again 
yells,  but  this  time  of  "Partenza"  and  "Pronti/' 
and  the  train  hurried  us  away  from  the  Panada, 
and  the  Orientale,  and  the  Lagoon,  to  a  world 
where  no  lotus  grows  and  life  is  all  labour. 


IV 
NIGHTS 

IN  LONDON 


IN  LONDON 


I  CANNOT  remember  how  or  why  we  began 
our  Thursday  nights.  I  rather  think  they 
began  themselves  and  we  kept  them  up  to 
protect  our  days  against  our  friends. 
It  was  an  unusually  busy  time  with  us — or 
perhaps  I  ought  to  say  with  me,  for,  to  my  knowl 
edge,  J.  has  never  known  the  time  that  was  any 
thing  else.  After  our  years  of  wandering,  years 
of  hotels  and  rooms  and  lodgings,  we  had  just 
settled  in  London  in  the  first  place  we  had  ever 
called  our  own — the  old  chambers  in  the  old  Buck 
ingham  Street  house  overlooking  the  river;  I 
was  doing  more  regular  newspaper  work  than  I 
had  ever  done  before  or  ever  hope  to  do  again; 
we  were  in  the  Eighteen-Nineties,  and  I  need 
neither  the  magnifying  glasses  through  which 
age  has  the  reputation  of  looking  backward,  nor 
the  clever  young  men  of  to-day  who  write  about 
that  delectable  decade  and  no  doubt  deplore  my 
indiscretion  in  being  alive  to  write  about  it  my 
self,  to  show  me  how  very  much  more  amusing 
and  interesting  life  was  then  than  now. 

117 


NIGHTS 

There  is  no  question  that  people,  especially 
people  doing  our  sort  of  work,  were  much  more 
awake  in  the  Nineties,  much  more  alive,  much 
more  keen  about  everything,  even  a  fight,  or  above 
all  a  fight,  if  they  thought  a  fight  would  clear  the 
air.  Those  clever  young  men,  self-appointed  his 
torians  of  a  period  they  know  only  by  hearsay, 
may  deplore  or  envy  its  decadence.  But  because 
a  small  clique  wrote  anaemic  verse  and  bragged 
of  the  vices  for  which  they  had  not  the  strength, 
because  a  few  youthful  artists  invented  new 
methods  of  expression  the  outsider  did  not  under 
stand,  that  does  not  mean  decadence.  A  period 
of  revolt  against  decadence,  of  insurrection,  of 
vigorous  warfare  it  seemed  to  me  who  lived  and 
worked  through  it.  The  Yellow  Nineties,  the 
Glorious  Nineties,  the  Naughty  Nineties,  the 
Rococo  Nineties,  are  descriptions  I  have  seen,  but 
the  Fighting  Nineties  would  be  mine.  As  I  re 
call  those  stimulating  days,  the  prevailing  atti 
tude  of  the  artist  in  his  studio,  the  author  at  his 
desk,  the  critic  at  his  task,  was  that  of  Henley's 
Man  in  the  Street : 

Hands  in  your  pockets,  eyes  on  the  pavement, 
Where  in  the  world  is  the  fun  of  it  all? 

But  a  row — but  a  rush — but  a  face  for  your  fist. 
Then  a  crash  through  the  dark — and  a  fall. 

118 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

Scarcely  an  important  picture  was  painted, 
an  important  illustration  published,  an  impor 
tant  book  written,  an  important  criticism  made, 
that  it  did  not  lead  to  battle.  Few  of  the  Young 
Men  of  the  Nineties  accomplished  all  the  tri 
umphant  things  they  thought  they  could,  but  the 
one  thing  they  never  failed  to  do  and  to  let  the 
world  know  they  were  doing  was  to  fight,  and 
they  loved  nothing  better — coats  off,  sleeves 
rolled  up,  arms  squared.  Whatever  happened 
was  to  them  a  challenge.  Whistler  began  the 
Nineties  with  his  Exhibition  at  the  Goupil  Gal 
lery  and  it  was  a  rout  for  the  enemy.  The  harm 
less  portrait  of  Desboutin  by  Degas  was  hung  at 
the  New  English  Art  Club  and  straightaway 
artists  and  critics  were  bludgeoning  each  other 
in  the  press.  Men  were  elected  to  the  Royal 
Academy,  pictures  were  bought  by  the  Chantrey 
Bequest ;  new  papers  and  magazines  were  started 
by  young  enthusiasts  with  something  to  say  and 
no  place  to  say  it  in;  new  poets,  yearning  for 
degeneracy,  read  their  poems  to  each  other  in  a 
public  house  they  preferred  to  re-christen  a 
tavern;  new  printing  presses  were  founded  to 
prove  the  superiority  of  the  esoteric  few;  new 
criticism — new  because  honest  and  intelligent — 
was  launched;  everything  suddenly  became  fin- 

119 


NIGHTS 

de-siecle  in  the  passing  catchword  of  the  day  bor 
rowed  from  Paris;  every  fad  of  the  Continent 
was  adopted ;  but  no  matter  what  it  might  be,  the 
incident,  or  work,  or  publication  that  roused  any 
interest  at  all  was  the  signal  for  the  clash  of  arms, 
for  the  row  and  the  rush.  Everybody  had  to  be 
in  revolt,  though  it  might  not  always  have  been 
easy  to  say  against  just  what.  I  remember  once, 
at  the  show  of  a  group  of  young  painters  who 
fancied  themselves  fiery  Independents,  running 
across  Felix  Buhot,  the  most  inflammable  man 
in  the  world,  and  his  telling  me,  with  his  wild 
eyes  more  aflame  than  usual,  that  he  could  smell 
the  powder.  He  was  not  far  wrong,  if  his  meta 
phor  was  a  trifle  out  of  proportion  to  those  very 
self-conscious  young  rebels.  A  good  deal  of 
powder  was  flying  about  in  the  Nineties,  and  when 
powder  flies,  whatever  else  may  come  of  it,  one 
thing  sure  is  that  nobody  can  sleep  and  most 
people  want  to  talk. 

I  had  not  been  in  London  a  year  before  I 
knew  that  there  the  cafe  was  not  the  place  to  talk 
in.  I  have  dreary  memories  of  the  first  efforts 
J.  and  I,  fresh  from  Italy,  made  to  go  on  leading 
the  easy,  free-from-care  life  in  restaurants  and 
cafes  we  had  led  in  Rome  and  Venice.  But  it 
was  not  to  be  done.  The  distances  were  too  great, 
120 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

the  weather  too  atrocious,  the  little  restaurants 
too  impossible,  the  big  restaurants  too  beyond 
our  purse,  and  the  only  real  cafe  was  the  Cafe 
Royal.  At  an  earlier  date  Whistler  had  drawn 
his  followers  to  it.  In  the  Nineties  Frederick 
Sandys  was  one  of  its  most  familiar  figures.  Even 
now,  especially  on  Saturday  nights,  young  men,  in 
long  hair  and  strange  hats  and  laboriously  un 
conventional  clothes,  are  to  be  met  there,  looking 
a  trifle  solemnized  by  their  share  in  so  un-Eng 
lish  an  entertainment.  For  this  is  the  trouble : 
The  cafe  is  not  an  English  institution  and  some 
thing  in  the  atmosphere  tells  you  right  away  that 
it  isn't.  It  might,  it  may  still,  serve  us  for  an 
occasion,  its  mirrors  and  gilding  and  red  velvet 
pleasantly  reminiscent,  but  for  night  after  night 
it  would  not  answer  at  all  as  the  Nazionale  had 
answered  in  Eome,  the  Orientate  in  Venice. 

However,  Buckingham  Street  made  a  good 
substitute  as  an  extremely  convenient  centre  for 
talk,  and  its  convenience  was  so  well  taken  ad 
vantage  of  that,  at  this  distance  of  time,  I  am 
puzzled  to  see  how  we  ever  got  any  work  done. 
J.  and  I  have  never  been  given  to  inhospitality, 
and  we  both  liked  the  talk.  But  the  day  of  reck 
oning  came  when,  sitting  down  to  lunch  one  morn 
ing,  we  realized  that  it  was  the  first  time  we  had 

121 


NIGHTS 

eaten  that  simple  meal  alone  for  we  could  not 
remember  how  long.  The  lunch  for  which  no 
preparation  is  made  and  at  which  the  company 
is  uninvited  but  amusing  may  be  one  of  the  most 
agreeable  of  feasts,  but  we  knew  too  well  that  if 
we  went  on  cutting  short  our  days  of  work  to 
enjoy  it,  we  ran  the  risk  of  no  lunch  ever  again 
for  ourselves,  let  alone  for  anybody  else. 

To  be  interrupted  in  the  evening  did  not  mat 
ter  so  much,  though  our  evenings  were  not  alto 
gether  free  of  work — nor  are  J.'s  even  yet,  the 
years  proving  less  kind  in  moulding  him  to  the 
indolence  to  which,  with  age,  I  often  find  myself 
pleasantly  yielding.  Our  friends,  when  we 
stopped  them  dropping  in  by  day,  began  drop 
ping  in  by  night  instead,  and  one  group  of  friends 
to  whom  Thursday  night  was  particularly  well 
adapted  for  the  purpose  gradually  turned  their 
dropping  in  from  a  chance  into  a  habit  until, 
before  we  knew  it,  we  were  regularly  at  home 
every  Thursday  after  dinner. 

The  entertainment,  if  it  can  be  called  by  so 
fine  a  name,  always  retained  something  of  the 
character  of  chance  with  which  it  began.  We 
sent  out  no  invitations,  we  attempted  no  formal 
ity.  Nobody  was  asked  to  play  at  anything  or 
to  listen  to  anything.  Nobody  was  expected  to 
122 


Mezzotint  by  Joseph  Pennell 

OUT  OF  OUR  LONDON  WINDOWS 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

dress,  though  anybody  who  wanted  to  could — 
everybody  was  welcome  in  the  clothes  they  wore, 
whether  they  came  straight  from  the  studio  or  a 
dinner.  If  eventually  I  provided  sandwiches — 
in  addition  to  the  tobacco  always  at  hand  in  the 
home  of  the  man  who  smokes  and  the  whiskey- 
and-soda  without  which  an  Englishman  cannot 
exist  through  an  evening — it  was  because  I  got 
too  hungry  not  to  need  something  to  eat  before 
the  last  of  the  company  had  said  good-night.  We 
did  not  offer  even  the  comfort  of  space.  Once 
the  small  dining-room  that  had  been  Etty's 
studio,  and  the  not  over-large  room  that  was  JVs, 
and  the  nondescript  room  that  was  drawing-room 
and  my  workroom  combined,  were  packed  solid, 
there  was  no  place  to  overflow  into  except  the 
short,  narrow  entrance  hall,  and  I  still  grow  hot 
at  the  thought  of  what  became  of  hats  and  coats 
if  it  also  was  filled.  I  can  never  forget  the  dis 
tressing  evening  when  in  the  bathroom — which, 
with  the  ingenuity  of  the  designer  of  flats,  had 
been  fitted  in  at  the  end  of  the  narrow  hall  and 
was  the  reason  of  its  shortness — I  caught  William 
Penn  devouring  the  gloves  of  an  artist's  wife 
who  I  do  not  believe  has  forgiven  him  to  this  day ; 
nor  the  still  more  distressing  occasion  when  I  dis 
covered  Bobbie,  William's  poor  timid  successor, 

123 


NIGHTS 

curled  up  on  a  brand-new  bonnet  of  feathers  and 
lace. 

But  it  was  the  very  informality,  so  long  as 
it  led  to  no  crimes  on  the  part  of  our  badly 
brought-up  cats,  that  attracted  the  friends  who 
were  as  busy  and  hard-working  as  ourselves, — 
this,  and  the  freedom  to  talk  without  being  si 
lenced  for  the  music  that  no  talker  wants  to  hear 
when  he  can  listen  to  his  own  voice,  or  for  the 
dances  that  nobody  wants  to  watch  if  he  can  fol 
low  his  own  argument,  or  for  the  introductions 
that  invariably  interrupt  at  the  wrong  moment, 
or  for  the  games  and  innumerable  devices  with 
out  which  intelligent  human  beings  are  not  sup 
posed  to  be  able  to  survive  an  evening  in  each 
other's  company.  The  idle  who  play  golf  all  day 
and  bridge  all  night,  who  cannot  eat  in  the  short 
intervals  between  without  music,  believe  that  talk 
has  gone  out  of  fashion.  My  experience  had  been 
in  Rome  and  Venice,  was  then  in  London,  and  is 
now,  that  men  and  women  who  have  something 
to  talk  about  are  always  anxious  to  talk  about  it, 
if  only  the  opportunity  is  given  to  them,  and  the 
one  attraction  we  offered  was  just  this  oppor 
tunity  for  people  who  had  been  doing  more  or 
less  the  same  sort  of  work  all  day  to  meet  and 
talk  about  it  all  night — the  reason  why,  despite 
124 


Bust  by  Rodin 


W.  E.  HENLEY 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

heat  and  discomfort,  despite  meagre  fare  and 
the  risk  to  hats  and  coats,  Thursday  after  Thurs 
day  crowded  our  rooms  to  suffocation  as  soon 
as  evening  came. 

II 

As,  in  memory,  I  listen  to  the  endless  talk  of 
our  Thursday  nights,  the  leading  voice,  when  not 
J.'s,  is  Henley's,  which  is  natural  since  it  was 
Henley,  followed  by  his  Young  Men, — our  name 
for  his  devoted  staff  always  in  attendance  at  his 
office  and  out  of  it, — who  got  so  into  the  habit  of 
dropping  in  to  see  us  on  Thursday  night  that  we 
got  into  the  habit  of  staying  at  home  to  see  him. 
For  Thursday  was  the  night  when  the  National 
Observer,  which  he  was  editing  at  the  time,  went 
to  press  and  Ballantynes,  the  printers,  were  not 
more  than  five  minutes  away  in  Covent  Garden. 
At  about  ten  his  work  was  over  and  he  and  his 
Young  Men  were  free  to  do  nothing  save  talk 
for  the  rest  of  the  -week  if  they  chose — and  they 
usually  did  choose — and  Buckingham  Street  was 
a  handy  place  to  begin  it  in.  Our  rooms  were 
already  fairly  well  packed,  pleasantly  smoky,  and 
echoing  with  the  agreeable  roar  of  battle  when 
they  arrived. 

I  like  to  remember  Henley  as  I  saw  him  then, 
especially  if  my  quite  superfluous  feeling  of  re- 

125 


NIGHTS 

sponsibility  as  hostess  had  brought  me  on  some 
equally  superfluous  mission  into  the  little  hall  at 
the  moment  of  his  arrival.  As  the  door  opened  he 
would  stand  there  at  the  threshold,  his  tall  soft 
black  hat  still  crowning  his  massive  head,  lean 
ing  on  his  crutch  and  stick  as  he  waited  to  take 
breath  after  his  climb  up  our  three  flights  of 
stone  stairs — "Did  I  really  ever  climb  those  stairs 
at  Buckingham  Street?" — he  asked  me  the  last 
time  I  saw  him,  some  years  later,  at  Worthing 
when  he  was  ill  and  broken,  and  I  have  often 
marvelled  myself  how  he  managed  it.  But 
breathless  as  he  might  be,  he  always  laughed  his 
greeting.  I  cannot  think  of  Henley  as  he  was  in 
his  prime,  to  borrow  a  word  that  was  a  favourite 
with  him,  without  hearing  his  laugh  and  seeing 
his  face  illuminated  by  it.  Rarely  has  a  man  so 
hampered  by  his  body  kept  his  spirit  so  gay.  He 
was  meant  to  be  a  splendid  creature  physically 
and  fate  made  of  him  a  helpless  cripple — who 
was  it  once  described  him  as  "the  wounded 
Titan"?  Everybody  knows  the  story:  he  made 
sure  that  everybody  should  by  telling  it  in  his 
Hospital  Verses.  But  everybody  cannot  know 
who  did  not  know  him  how  bravely  he  accepted 
his  disaster.  It  seemed  to  me  characteristic  once 
when  a  young  cousin  of  mine,  a  girl  at  the  most 
126 


Painting  by  William  Nicholson 

W.  E.  HENLEY 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

susceptible  age  of  hero-worship,  meeting  him  for 
the  first  time  in  our  chambers  and  volunteering, 
in  the  absence  of  anybody  else  available,  to  fetch 
the  cab  he  needed,  thought  his  allowing  her  to  go 
on  such  an  errand  for  him  the  eccentricity  of 
genius  and  never  suspected  his  lameness  until  he 
stood  up  and  took  his  crutch  from  the  corner. 
There  was  nothing  about  him  to  suggest  the 
cripple. 

He  was  a  remarkably  handsome  man,  despite 
his  disability,  tall  and  large  and  fair,  a  noble  head 
and  profile,  a  shock  of  red  hair,  short  red  beard, 
keen  pale  blue  eyes,  his  indomitable  gaiety  filling 
his  face  with  life  and  animation,  smoothing  out 
the  lines  of  pain  and  care.  He  was  so  striking 
in  every  way,  his  individuality  so  strangely 
marked  that  the  wonder  is  the  good  portrait  of 
him  should  be  the  exception.  Nicholson,  when 
painting  him,  was  a  good  deal  preoccupied  with 
the  big  soft  hat  and  blue  shirt  and  flowing  tie, 
feeling  their  picturesque  value,  and  turned  him 
into  a  brigand,  a  land  pirate,  to  the  joy  of  Henley, 
whom  I  always  suspected  of  feeling  this  value 
himself  and  dressing  as  he  did  for  the  sake  of 
picturesqueness.  Simon  Bussy  seemed  to  see,  not 
Henley,  but  Stevenson's  caricature — the  John 
Silver  of  Treasure  Island,  the  cripple  with  the 

127 


NIGHTS 

face  as  big  as  a  ham.  Even  Whistler  failed  and 
never  printed  more  than  one  or  two  proofs  of  the 
lithograph  for  which  Henley  sat.  Rodin  came 
nearest  success,  his  bust  giving  the  dignity  and 
ruggedness  and  character  of  head  and  profile 
both.  He  and  Nicholson  together  go  far  to 
explain  the  man. 

Unfortunately  there  is  no  biography  at  all. 
Charles  Whibley  was  to  have  written  the  author 
ized  life,  but'the  world  still  waits.  Cope  Corn- 
ford  attempted  a  sketch,  but  scarcely  the  shadow 
of.  Henley  emerges  from  its  pages.  Because  he 
thundered  and  denounced  and  condemned  and 
slashed  to  pieces  in  the  National  Observer,  his 
contemporaries  imagined  that  Henley  did  noth 
ing  anywhere  at  any  time  save  thunder  and  de 
nounce  and  condemn  and  slash  to  pieces  and 
that  he  was  altogether  a  fierce,  choleric,  intoler 
ant,  impossible  sort  of  a  person.  The  chances 
are  few  now  realize  that  Henley  was  enough  of 
an  influence  in  his  generation  for  it  to  have  mat 
tered  to  anybody  what  manner  of  man  he  was. 
A  glimpse  of  him  remains  here  and  there.  Ste 
venson  has  left  the  description  of  his  personality, 
so  strong  that  he  was  felt  in  a  room  before  he  was 
seen.  His  vigour  and  his  manliness,  survive  in 
his  work,  but  cannot  quite  explain  the  command- 
128 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

ing  power  lie  was  in  his  generation,  while  neither 
he  nor  his  friends  have  shewn,  as  it  should  be 
shewn,  the  other  side  to  his  character,  the  gay, 
the  kindly  side,  so  that  I  feel  almost  as  if  I  owed 
it  to  his  memory  to  put  on  record  my  impressions 
of  my  first  meeting  with  him,  since  it  was  only 
this  side  he  then  gave  me  the  chance  to  see. 

I  wonder  sometimes  why  I  had  never  met 
Henley  before.  When  J.  and  I  came  to  London 
he  was  editing  the  Magazine  of  Art,  a  little  later 
he  managed  the  Art  Journal,  and  in  both  he  pub 
lished  a  number  of  JVs  drawings,  and  we  had 
letters  from  him.  We  went  to  houses  where  he 
often  visited.  I  remember  hearing  him  an 
nounced  once  at  the  Robinsons'  in  Earl's  Ter 
race,  but  Miss  Mary  Robinson,  as  she  was  then — 
Madame  Duclaux  as  she  is  now — left  everybody 
in  the  drawing-room  while  she  went  to  see  him 
downstairs,  because  of  his  lameness  she  said,  but 
partly,  I  fancied,  because  she  wanted  to  keep  him 
to  herself  to  discuss  a  new  series  of  articles.  She 
had  just  "come  out"  in  literature  and  was  as 
fluttered  by  her  every  new  appearance  in  print  as 
most  girls  are  by  theirs  in  a  ball-room.  In  other 
houses,  more  than  once  I  just  missed  him,  I  had 
never  got  nearer  than  business  correspondence 
when  he  left  London  to  edit  the  Scots  Observer 
9  129 


NIGHTS 

in  Edinburgh,  and  he  stayed  there  until  the  Scots 
became  the  National  Observer  with  its  offices  in 
London. 

I  had  heard  more  than  enough  about  hi-m  in 
the  meanwhile.  The  man  who  says  what  he  be 
lieves  to  be  the  truth — the  man  who  sits  in,  and 
talks  from,  the  chair  of  the  scorners — is  bound  to 
get  himself  hated,  and  Henley  came  in  for  his 
fair  share  of  abuse.  As  somebody  says,  truth 
never  goes  without  a  scratched  face. 

But,  like  all  men  hated  by  the  many,  Henley 
inspired  devotion  in  the  few  who,  in  his  case,  were 
not  only  devoted  themselves  but  eager  to  make 
their  friends  devoted  too.  When  he  got  back  to 
London  one  of  his  Young  Men,  whom  I  do  not 
see  why  I  should  not  call  Charles  Whibley,  in 
sisted  that  J.  and  I  must  meet  Henley  first  in 
the  right  way,  that  all  our  future  relations  with 
him  depended  upon  it,  and  that  this  right  way 
would  be  for  him  to  ask  Henley  and  ourselves, 
and  nobody  else,  to  dinner  in  his  rooms. 

When  the  evening  came  J.  was  off  on  a  journey 
for  work  and  I  went  alone  to  Fig-Tree  House — 
the  little  old  house,  with  a  poor  shabby  London 
apology  of  a  fig-tree  in  front,  on  Milbank  Street 
by  the  riverside,  which,  with  Henley's  near  Great 
College  Street  office  round  the  corner,  has  dis- 
130 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

appeared  in  the  fury  of  municipal  town-disfigure 
ment.  A  popular  young  man,  in  making  his 
plans,  cannot  afford  to  reckon  without  his 
friends.  Four  uninvited  guests,  all  men,  had 
arrived  before  me,  a  fifth  appeared  as  I  did, 
and  he  was  about  the  last  man  any  of  the  party 
could  have  wanted  at  that  particular  moment — 
a  good  and  old  and  intimate  friend  of  Steven 
son's,  whose  own  name  I  am  too  discreet  to 
mention  but  to  whom,  for  reasons  I  am  also  too 
discreet  to  explain,  I  may  give  that  of  Michael 
Finsbury  instead.  Whoever  has  read  The  Wrong 
Box  knows  that  Michael  Finsbury  enjoyed  in 
tervals  of  relaxation  from  work,  knows  also  the 
nature  of  the  relaxation.  I  had  struck  him  at 
the  high  tide  of  one  of  these  intervals.  It  was 
terribly  awkward  for  everybody,  especially  for 
me.  I  have  got  now  to  an  age  when  I  could  face 
that  sort  of  awkwardness  with  equanimity,  even 
with  amusement.  But  I  was  young  then,  I  had 
not  lived  down  my  foolish  shyness,  and  I  would 
have  run  if,  in  my  embarrassment,  I  had  had 
the  courage, — would  have  run  anyhow,  I  do  be 
lieve,  if  it  had  not  been  for  Henley.  He  seized 
the  situation  and  mastered  it.  He  had  the  repu 
tation  of  being  the  most  brutal  of  men,  but  he 
showed  a  delicacy  that  few  could  have  sur- 

131 


NIGHTS 

passed  or  equalled  under  the  circumstances.  He 
simply  forced  me  to  forget  the  presence  of  the 
objectionable  Michael  Finsbury,  who  at  the  other 
end  of  the  table,  I  learned  afterwards,  was  over 
whelming  his  neighbours  with  a  worse  embar 
rassment  than  mine  by  finding  me  every  bit  as 
objectionable  as  I  found  him,  and  saying  so  with 
a  frankness  it  was  not  in  me  to  emulate. 

The  force  Henley  used  with  such  success  was 
simply  his  talk.  He  did  not  let  my  attention 
wander  for  one  minute,  so  full  of  interest  was  all 
he  had  to  say,  while  the  enthusiasm  with  which 
he  said  it  became  contagious.  I  can  remember 
to  this  day  how  he  made  me  see  a  miracle  in  the 
mere  number  of  the  Velasquezes  in  the  Prado, 
an  adventure  in  every  hansom  drive  through  the 
London  streets,  an  event  in  the  dressing  of  the 
salad  for  dinner — how  he  transformed  life  into 
one  long  Arabian  Nights'  Entertainment,  which 
is  why  I  suppose  it  has  always  been  my  pride 
that  his  poem  called  by  that  name  he  dedicated 
to  me.  And  so  the  evening  that  began  as  one  of 
the  most  embarrassing  in  my  experience  ended 
as  one  of  the  most  delightful,  and  the  man  whom 
I  had  trembled  to  meet  because  of  his  reputation 
with  those  who  did  not  know  him  or  understand 
intolerance  in  a  just  cause,  won  me  over  com- 
132 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

pletely  by  Ms  kindness,  Ms  consideration,  Ms 
charm. 

Henley  delighted  in  talk,  tliat  was  why  lie 
talked  so  well.  On  Thursday  night  his  crutch 
would  be  left  with  Ms  big  hat  at  the  front  door ; 
then,  one  hand  leaning  on  Ms  cane,  the  other 
against  the  wall  for  support,  he  would  hobble 
over  to  the  chair  waiting  for  Mm,  usually  by  the 
window  for  he  loved  to  look  out  on  the  river,  and 
there,  seldom  moving  except  to  stand  bending 
over  with  both  arms  on  the  back  of  the  chair, 
which  was  Ms  way  of  resting,  and  always  with 
Ms  Young  Men  round  him,  the  talk  would  begin 
and  the  talk  would  last  until  only  my  foolish 
ideas  of  civility  kept  me  up  to  listen.  As  a 
woman,  I  had  not  then,  nor  have  I  yet,  ceased  to 
be  astonished  by  man's  passion  for  talking  shop 
and  Ms  power  of  going  on  with  it  forever.  My 
explanation  of  this  special  power  used  to  be  that 
the  occupation  supplied  him  by  the  necessity  of 
keeping  Ms  pipe  or  Ms  cigarette  or  his  cigar 
going,  with  the  inevitable  interruptions  and 
pauses  and  movement,  and  the  excitement  of  the 
eternal  hunt  for  the  matches,  made  the  differ 
ence  and  helped  to  keep  Mm  awake — there  is 
nothing  more  difficult  for  me  personally  than  to 
sit  still  long  when  my  hands  are  idle,  unless  I 

133 


NIGHTS 

am  reading.  But  the  women  I  know  who  smoke 
are  not  men's  equals  in  the  capacity  for  endless 
talk  and  the  reason  must  be  to  seek  elsewhere. 
He  who  divines  it  will  have  gone  far  to  solving 
the  tedious  problem  of  sex. 

Of  Henley  the  talker,  at  least,  one  portrait 
remains.  He  was  the  original  of  Stevenson's 
Burly — the  talker  who  would  roar  you  down, 
bury  his  face  in  his  hands,  undergo  passions  of 
revolt  and  agony,  letting  loose  a  spring  torrent 
of  words.  There  was  always  a  wild  flood  and 
storm  of  talk  wherever  Henley  might  be.  He 
and  his  Young  Men  were  the  most  clamorous 
group  of  the  clamorous  Nineties,  though  curi 
ously  their  clamour  seems  faint  in  the  ears  of 
the  present  authorities  on  that  noisy  period.  I 
have  read  one  of  these  authorities7  description  of 
the  London  of  the  Nineties  dressed  in  a  powder 
puff,  dancing  beneath  Chinese  lanterns,  being  as 
wicked  as  could  be  in  artificial  rose-gardens.  But 
had  Henley  and  his  Young  Men  suspected  the 
existence  of  a  London  like  that,  they  would  have 
overthrown  it  with  their  voices,  as  Joshua  over 
threw  the  walls  of  Jericho  with  his  trumpets. 
To  other  authorities  the  Nineties  represent  an 
endless  orgy  of  societies — Independent  Theatre 
Societies,  Fabian  Societies,  Browning  Societies, 
134 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

every  possible  kind  of  societies — but  the  National 
Observer,  with  its  keen  scent  for  shams,  was  as 
ready  to  pounce  upon  any  and  all  of  them  for 
the  good  of  their  health,  and  to  upbraid  their 
members  as  cranks.  It  was  a  paper  that  existed 
to  protest  against  just  this  sort  of  thing,  as 
against  most  other  things  in  a  sentimental  and 
artificial  and  reforming  and  ignorant  world.  It 
made  as  much  noise  in  print  as  its  editorial  staff 
made  in  talk.  The  main  function  of  criticism, 
according  to  Henley,  was  to  increase  the  powers 
of  depreciation  rather  than  of  appreciation,  and 
what  a  healthy  doctrine  it  is!  As  editor,  he 
roared  down  his  opponents  no  less  lustily  than 
he  roared  them  down  as  talkers,  and  he  had  the 
strong  wit  and  the  strong  heart  that  a  man  must 
have,  or  so  it  is  said,  to  know  when  to  tell  the 
truth,  which,  with  him,  was  always.  He  could 
not  stand  anything  like  affectation,  or  what 
people  were  calling  aestheticism  and  decadence. 
To  him,  literature  was  literature  and  art  was  art, 
and  not  puling  sentiment,  affected  posturing, 
lilies  and  sunflowers.  The  National  Observer  was 
the  housetop  from  which  he  shouted  for  all  who 
passed  to  hear  that  it  did  not  matter  twopence 
what  the  dabbler  wanted  to  express  if  he  could 
not  express  it,  if  he  had  not  the  technique  of  his 

135 


NIGHTS 

medium  at  his  fingers'  ends  and  under  his  per 
fect  control.  A  man  might  indulge  in  noble  and 
beautiful  ideas,  and  if  he  did  not  know  how  to 
put  them  in  beautiful  words  or  in  beautiful  paint 
or  in  beautiful  sound,  he  was  anathema,  to  be  cast 
into  outer  darkness  where  there  is  gnashing  of 
teeth — the  doctrine  of  art  for  art's  sake  which  the 
advanced  young  leaders  of  the  new  generation 
assure  me  is  hopelessly  out  of  date.  Pretence  of 
any  kind  was  as  the  red  rag;  " bleat"  was  the 
unpardonable  sin;  the  man  who  was  " human" 
was  the  man  to  be  praised.  I  would  not  pretend 
to  say  who  invented  this  meaning  for  the  word 
"human."  Perhaps  Louis  Stevenson.  As  far 
back  as  1880,  in  a  letter  from  Davos  describing 
the  people  "in  a  kind  of  damned  hotel"  where  he 
had  put  up,  I  find  him  using  it  as  Henley  and  his 
Young  Men  used  it  later : 

Eleven  English  Parsons,  all 

Entirely  inoffensive;  four 
True  human  beings — what  I  call 

Human — the  deuce  a  cipher  more. 

Stevenson  may  even  then  have  learned  it  from 
Henley.  But  however  that  may  have  been, 
" bleat"  and  " human"  were  the  two  words  ever 
recurring  like  a  refrain  in  the  columns  of  the 
National  Observer,  ever  the  beginning  and  end 
136 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

of  argument  in  the  heated  atmosphere  of  Buck 
ingham  Street. 

In  my  memory,  every  Thursday  night  stands 
for  a  battle.  Henley  was  then  always  at  his  best. 
His  week's  task  was  done,  he  was  not  due  at  his 
house  in  Addiscombe  until  the  next  day,  for  he 
always  stayed  in  his  Great  College  Street  rooms 
from  Monday  to  Friday — and  the  night  was  be 
fore  him.  At  first  I  trembled  a  little  at  the  smell 
of  powder  under  my  own  roof,  at  turning  our 
chambers  into  the  firing  line  when  friends  came 
to  them  to  pass  a  peaceful  friendly  evening — the 
Roman  and  Venetian  cafes  and  restaurants  of 
my  earlier  experience  had  been  common  ground 
on  which  combatants  shared  equal  rights  or,  bet 
ter,  no  rights  at  all.  It  was  probably  my  old 
Philadelphia  bringing  up  that  made  me  question 
the  propriety  of  the  same  freedom  at  home,  that 
made  me  doubt  its  being  quite  "the  thing"  when 
J.,  who  is  an  excellent  fighter  though  a  Phila- 
delphian,  met  Henley  in  a  clash  of  words.  But 
I  quickly  got  accustomed  to  the  fight  and  enjoyed 
it  and  would  not  have  had  it  otherwise. 

Some  friends  who  came,  I  must  confess,  en 
joyed  it  less,  especially  if  they  were  still  smart 
ing  from  a  recent  attack  in  the  National  Observer. 
There  were  evenings  when  it  took  a  good  deal  of 

137 


NIGHTS 

skilful  manoeuvring  on  everybody's  part  to  keep 
Henley  and  Ms  victims  at  a  safe  distance  from 
each  other.  More  than  once  in  later  days  Walter 
Crane  laughed  with  us  at  the  memory  of  a  Thurs 
day  night,  just  after  he  had  been  torn  to  pieces  in 
the  best  National  Observer  style,  when  he  gradu 
ally  realized  that  he  was  being  kept  a  prisoner  in 
the  corner  into  which  he  had  been  driven  on  his 
arrival,  and  he  could  not  understand  why  until, 
breaking  loose,  he  discovered  Henley  in  the  next 
room.  Our  alarm  was  not  surprising,  knowing 
as  we  did  what  a  valiant  fighter  Crane  was  him 
self  :  as  a  socialist  waving  the  red  flag  in  the  face 
of  the  world,  as  an  artist  forever  rushing  into  the 
papers  to  defend  his  theories  of  art,  as  a  man 
refusing  to  see  his  glory  in  passing  by  an  offence. 
Not  very  long  before,  J.  had  exasperated  him  in 
print,  by  the  honest  expression  of  an  opinion  he 
did  not  happen  to  like,  into  threats  of  a  big  stick 
ready  for  attack  the  next  time  J.  ventured  upon 
his  walks  abroad.  I  need  not  add  that  J.  did  not 
bother  to  stay  at  home,  that  the  big  stick  never 
materialized,  that,  though  this  was  only  the  first 
of  many  fights  between  the  two,  Walter  Crane 
was  our  friend  to  the  end.  But  the  little  episode 
gives  the  true  spirit  of  the  Nineties. 

I  can  still  see  Beardsley  dodging  from  group 
138 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

to  group  to  escape  Henley,  for  he  never  recovered 
from  the  fright  of  the  first  encounter.  He  told 
me  the  story  at  the  time.  He  had  gone,  by  special 
appointment,  to  call  on  Henley,  under  his  arm 
the  little  portfolio  he  was  rarely  without  in  those 
early  days,  ready  and  enchanted  as  he  always  was 
to  show  his  drawings  to  anybody  willing  to  look 
at  them.  As  he  went  up  the  two  flights  of  stairs 
to  Henley's  Great  College  Street  rooms,  he  heard 
a  voice,  loud,  angry,  terrifying;  at  the  top, 
through  an  open  door,  he  saw  a  youth  standing 
in  the  middle  of  the  room  listening  in  abject 
terror  to  a  large  red  man  at  a  desk  whom  he  knew 
instinctively  to  be  Henley; — one  glance,  and  he 
turned  and  fled,  down  the  stairs,  into  the  street, 
the  little  portfolio  under  his  arm,  his  pace  never 
slackening  until  he  got  well  beyond  the  Houses 
of  Parliament,  through  the  Horse  Guards  into 
the  Park. 

Other  friends  would  not  come  at  all  on 
Thursday  because  of  Henley,  just  as  later  more 
than  one  stayed  away  altogether  because  of 
Whistler.  I  was  wretchedly  nervous  when  they 
did  come  and  brave  a  face-to-face  meeting.  Hen 
ley  was  not  the  sort  of  man  to  shirk  a  fight  in  the 
open.  The  principal  reason  for  his  unpopularity 
was  just  that  habit  of  his  of  saying  what  he 

139 


NIGHTS 

thought  no  matter  where  or  when  or  to  whom. 
He  did  not  spare  his  friends,  for  he  would  not 
have  kept  them  as  friends  had  they  not  held  some 
opinions  worth  his  attacking,  and  they  under 
stood  and  respected  him  for  it.  Moreover,  he 
said  what  he  had  to  say  in  the  plainest  language. 
He  roared  his  adversary  down  in  good,  strong, 
picturesque  English,  if  that  was  any  consolation, 
and  with  a  splendidly  rugged  eloquence. 

I  wish  I  could  remember  the  words  as  well  as 
the  roar.  Henley  ?s  eloquence  cannot  be  forgotten 
by  those  who  ever  once  listened  to  him,  but  his 
wit  was  not,  like  Whistler's,  so  keen  nor  his 
thrust  so  direct  that  the  phrase,  the  one  word  of 
the  retort  or  the  attack,  was  unforgettable.  He 
had  his  little  affectations  of  speech  as  of  style, 
and  they  added  to  its  pieturesqueness.  But  it 
was  what  he  said  that  counted,  the  talk  itself  that 
probably  inspired  more  sound  thought  and  sound 
writing  than  most  talk  heard  in  the  England  of 
the  Nineties.  But  it  fell  unrecorded  on  paper 
and  memory  could  not  be  trusted  after  all  these 
years. 

It  is  the  greater  pity  because  his  books  are 

few.   He  was  poor  when  he  started  in  life ;  almost 

at  once  he  married ;  he  was  generous  to  a  fault, 

and  the  generous  man  never  yet  lived  who  was 

140 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

not  pursued  by  parasites ;  and  as  he  was  obliged 
to  earn  money  and  as  Ms  books  were  not  of  the 
stuff  that  makes  the  "best  sellers, "  his  criticism 
of  life  and  art  was  expressed  mainly  in 
journalism. 

Unfortunately,  no  just  idea  of  the  amount  or 
the  quality  of  his  journalistic  work  is  now  to  be 
had  even  from  the  files  of  the  National  Observer. 
He  had  a  way  of  editing  every  article  sent  in  to 
him  until  it  became  more  than  a  fair  imitation  of 
his  own.  I  can  sympathize  with  his  object — the 
artist's  desire  for  harmony,  for  the  unity  of  the 
paper  as  a  whole.  But  if  he  succeeded,  as  he  did, 
it  was  at  the  sacrifice  of  the  force,  the  effect,  the 
character  of  individual  contributions,  and  nobody 
can  now  say  for  sure  which  were  Henley's  save 
those  he  re-published  in  book  form.  When 
articles  I  wrote  for  him  appeared  in  print,  it  was 
an  open  question  with  me  whether  I  had  the  right 
to  call  them  mine  and  to  take  any  money  for 
them.  His  Views  and  Reviews  gathered  from  the 
National  Observer  and  other  papers  and  period 
icals,  his  three  or  four  small  volumes  of  verse, 
the  plays  he  wrote  with  Stevenson,  an  anthology 
or  two,  a  few  books  of  his  editing,  are  scarcely 
sufficient  to  explain  to  the  present  generation  his 
importance  in  his  day  and  why  his  influence 

141 


NIGHTS 

made  itself  felt  in  literature  as  keenly  as 
Whistler's  in  art,  through  all  the  movements  and 
excitements  and  enthusiasms  of  the  Nineties. 
The  joyous  wars  that  marked  the  beginning  of 
my  life  in  London,  when  not  led  by  Whistler's 
"Ha!  Ha!"  were  commanded  by  Henley's  roar. 

No  man  was  ever  more  in  need  of  a  Boswell 
than  Henley.  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell  once  complained 
to  me  that  in  America  nobody  waited  upon  great 
men  to  report  their  sayings,  while  in  England  a 
young  man  was  always  somewhere  near  with  a 
clean  cuff  to  scribble  them  on.  The  enthusiast, 
with  his  cuff  an  impatient  blank,  never  hung 
about  Henley.  Anyway,  that  was  not  what  our 
Thursday  evenings  were  for.  Of  all  his  Young 
Men  who  climbed  up  the  Buckingham  Street 
stairs  with  him  on  Thursday  night  and  sat  round 
him,  his  devoted  disciples,  until  they  climbed 
down  the  Buckingham  Street  stairs  with  him 
again,  not  one  seems  to  have  hit  upon  this  useful 
way  of  proving  his  devotion. 

I  do  not  need  to  be  told  that  this  was  no  excuse 
for  my  not  having  my  cuff  ready.  But,  foolishly 
perhaps,  I  too  often  spent  my  Thursday  nights 
oppressed  by  other  cares.  For  one  thing,  I  could 
seldom  keep  my  weekly  article  on  Cookery  out 
of  my  mind.  Without  it  Saturday's  P all-Mall, 
142 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

I  felt,  would  lose  its  brilliancy  and  my  bank 
account,  I  knew,  would  grow  appreciably  less, 
and  Friday  was  my  day  for  writing  it.  A  serious 
question  therefore  was,  how,  if  I  did  not  get  to 
bed  until  two  or  three  or  four  o'clock  on  Friday 
morning,  was  I  to  sit  down  at  my  desk  at  nine 
and  be  the  brilliant  authority  on  Eating  that  I 
thought  I  was? 

Another  distraction  grew  out  of  my  mistaken 
sense  of  duty  as  hostess,  my  feeling  of  respon 
sibility  in  providing  for  all  a  share  in  the  cheer 
ful  smell  of  powder  and  the  stimulating  sound 
of  strife. 

Also,  men  being  at  best  selfish  animals,  their 
wives,  whose  love  of  battle  was  less,  were  often 
an  anxiety. 

These  seemed  big  things  at  the  time,  though 
in  retrospect  they  have  dwindled  into  trifles  that 
I  had  no  business  to  let  come  between  me  and  my 
opportunities  to  store  up  for  future  generations 
talk  as  brilliant  as  any  on  record.  Of  course  I 
heard  a  great  deal  of  it,  and  what  I  missed  at 
home  on  our  Thursday  nights,  I  made  up  for  at 
Henley's,  and  at  friends'  houses  on  many  other 
occasions,  and  few  can  answer  better  than  I  for 
the  quality  of  Henley's  talk  if  I  have  forgotten 
the  actual  words.  Its  strength  was  its  simple 

143 


NIGHTS 

directness, — no  posing,  no  phrasing,  no  attitud 
inizing  for  effect.  This,  I  know,  was  always  what 
most  struck  people  when  they  first  met  him  on 
our  Thursday  nights,  especially  Americans,  for 
with  us  in  America  the  man  who  has  won  the 
reputation  of  greatness  too  often  seems  afraid  he 
will  lose  it  if  he  does  not  forever  advertise  it  by 
fireworks  of  cleverness  and  wit. 

Henley's  talk  had  too  a  strange  mixture  of 
the  brutal  and  the  tender,  the  rough  and  the  fine, 
a  blending  of  the  highest  things  with  what  might 
seem  to  the  ordinary  man  the  most  trivial.  I 
asked  two  old  friends  of  his  the  other  day  what 
they  remembered  best  of  him  and  of  his  talk. 
The  answer  of  one  was:  "He  was  certainly  the 
most  stupendous  Jove-like  creature  who  ever 
lived,  and  I  did  not  in  the  least  mind  his  calling 
me  Billy,  which  I  have  always  hated  from 
others."  The  second  answer  was :  "He  talked  as 
he  wrote,  and  I  know  of  nothing  more  character 
istic  of  his  talking  and  his  writing  than  that 
tragic  poem  in  which,  with  his  heart  crying  for 
the  child  he  had  adored  and  lost,  he  could  com 
pare  himself  to  'an  old  black  rotter  of  a  boat' 
past  service,  and  could  see,  when  criticised  for  it, 
nothing  discordant  in  that  slang  rotter  dropped 
into  such  verse!"  A  good  deal  of  Henley  is  in 
144 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

both  answers.  This  curious  blend  must  have 
especially  struck  everybody  who  saw  him  and 
listened  to  him  in  his  own  home.  I  can  recall 
summer  Sunday  afternoons  at  Addiscombe,  with 
Henley  sitting  on  a  rug  spread  on  the  lawn  be 
hind  his  house,  Mrs,  Henley  at  his  side,  his  eyes 
following  with  twinkling  tenderness  his  little 
daughter  as  she  ran  backwards  and  forwards 
busy  with  the  manifold  cares  of  childhood,  while 
all  the  time,  to  his  Young  Men  gathered  round 
him,  he  was  thundering  against  the  last  book,  or 
the  last  picture  show,  or  the  last  new  music,  in 
language  not  unworthy  of  Defoe  or  Smollett,  for 
Henley  could  call  a  spade  not  only  a  spade  but  a 
steam  shovel  when  so  minded.  He  could  soar  to 
the  heights  and  dive  to  the  depths  in  the-  same 
breath. 

But  Henley's  talk  was  animated  above  all  by 
the  intense  and  virile  love  of  life  that  I  was  so 
conscious  of  in  him  personally,  that  reveals  itself 
in  every  line  he  wrote,  and  that  is  what  I  liked 
best  about  him.  He  was  so  alive,  so  exhilarated 
with  the  sense  of  being  alive.  The  tremendous 
vitality  of  the  man,  that  should  have  found  its 
legitimate  outlet  in  physical  activity,  seemed  to 
have  gone  instead  into  his  thought  and  his  ex 
pression  of  it — as  if  the  very  fact  that  fate  forced 
him  to  remain  a  looker-on  had  made  him  the 
10  145 


NIGHTS 

more  sensitive  to  the  beauty,  the  joy,  the  chal 
lenge  in  everything  life  gave  him  to  look  at.  He 
could  wrest  romance  even  out  of  the  drear,  drab 
hospital — there  is  another  characteristic  glimpse 
in  one  of  Stevenson's  letters,  a  picture  of  Henley 
sitting  up  in  his  hospital  bed,  his  hair  and  beard 
all  tangled,  "  talking  as  cheerfully  as  if  he  had 
been  in  a  King's  palace,  or  the  great  King's 
palace  of  the  blue  air." 

His  interest  in  life  was  far  too  large  and  all- 
embracing  for  him  to  be  indifferent  to  the  small 
est  or  most  insignificant  part  of  it.  He  had  none 
of  the  disdain  for  everyday  details,  none  of  the 
fear  of  the  commonplace  that  oppresses  many 
men  who  think  themselves  great.  Nothing  that 
lived  came  amiss  to  his  philosophy  or  his  pleas 
ure.  He  could  talk  as  brilliantly  upon  the  affairs 
of  the  kitchen  as  upon  those  of  state,  he  could 
appreciate  gossip  as  well  as  verse,  he  could  laugh 
over  an  absurdity  as  easily  as  he  could  extol  the 
masterpiece.  Romance  for  him  was  everywhere — 
in  the  slang  of  the  cockney  of  the  Strand  as  in  a 
symphony  by  Berlioz,  in  'Arriet's  feathers  as  in 
the  "Don  Diegos"  of  the  Prado — the  mere  sound 
of  the  title  in  his  mouth  became  a  tribute  to  the 
master  he  honoured  above  most — in  the  patter 
of  the  latest  Lion-comique  of  the  Halls  as  in  the 
146 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

prose  of  Meredith  or  Borrow,  in  the  disreput 
able  cat  stealing  home  through  the  dull  London 
dawn  as  in  the  Romanticists  emerging  from  the 
chill  of  Classicism — in  everything,  big  and  little, 
in  which  he  felt  the  life  so  dear  to  him  throbbing. 
And  he  loved  always  the  visible  sign  through 
which  the  appeal  came.  I  have  seen  him  lean, 
spell-bound,  from  our  windows  on  a  blue  summer 
night,  thrilled  by  the  presence  out  there  of 
Cleopatra's  Needle,  the  pagan  symbol  flaunting 
its  slenderness  against  river  and  sky,  while  in 
the  distance  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's,  the  Christian 
symbol,  hung  a  phantom  upon  the  heavens.  His 
pleasure  in  the  friendship  of  men  of  rank  and 
family  might  have  savoured  of  snobbishness  had 
not  one  understood  how  much  they  stood  for  to 
him  as  symbols.  I  am  sure  he  could  fancy  him 
self  with  these  friends  that  same  King  of  Babylon 
who  thrills  in  the  lover  of  his  poem.  I  used  to 
think  that  for  him  all  the  drama  of  Admiral 
Guinea,  one  of  the  plays  he  wrote  with  Steven 
son,  was  concentrated  in  the  tap-tap  of  the  blind 
man's  stick.  In  his  Hospital  Verses,  his  London 
Voluntaries,  his  every  Rhyme  and  Rhythm,  the 
outward  sign  is  the  expression  of  the  emotion, 
the  thought  that  is  in  him.  And  coming  down  to 
more  ordinary  matters — ordinary,  that  is,  to 

147 


NIGHTS 

most  people — I  shall  never  forget,  once  when  I 
was  in  Spain  and  he  wrote  to  me  there,  his  decora 
tion  of  my  name  on  the  envelope  with  the  finest 
ceremonial  prefix  of  the  ceremonious  Spanish 
code  which  to  him  represented  the  splendour  of 
the  land  of  Don  Diego  and  Don  Quixote. 

It  was  this  faculty  of  entering  into  the  heart, 
the  spirit  of  life  and  all  things  in  it  that  made 
him  the  inspiring  companion  and  friend  he  was, 
that  widened  his  sympathies  until  he,  whose  in 
tolerance  was  a  byword  with  his  contemporaries, 
showed  himself  tolerant  of  everything  save  sham 
and  incompetence.  The  men  who  would  tell  you 
in  their  day,  who  will  tell  you  now,  of  the  great 
debt  they  owe  to  Henley,  are  men  of  the  most 
varied  interests,  whose  style  and  subject  both 
might  have  been  expected  to  prove  a  great  gulf  to 
separate  them.  Ask  Arthur  Morrison  straight 
from  the  East  End,  or  FitzMaurice  Kelly  fresh 
from  Spain ;  ask  W.  B.  Blakie  preoccupied  with 
the  modern  development  of  the  printed  book, 
or  Wells  adrift  in  a  world  of  his  own  invention ; 
ask  Kipling  steeped  in  the  real,  or  Barrie  lost 
in  the  Kail- Yard ;  ask  Kenneth  Grahame  on  his 
Olympian  heights  or  George  S.  Street  deep  in 
his  study  of  the  prig — ask  any  one  of  these  men 
and  a  score  besides  what  Henley's  sympathy, 
148 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

Henley's  outstretched  hand,  meant  to  him,  and 
some  idea  of  the  breadth  of  his  judgment  and 
taste  and  helpfulness  may  be  had.  Why  he  could 
condescend  even  to  me  when,  in  my  brave  igno 
rance,  I  undertook  to  write  that  weekly  column 
on  Cookery  for  the  Pall-Mall.  He  it  was  who 
gave  me  Dumas 's  Dictionnaire  de  la  Cuisine,  the 
corner-stone  of  my  collection  of  cookery  books — 
a  fact  in  which  I  see  so  much  of  Henley  that  I 
feel  as  if  the  stranger  to  him  who  to-day  takes 
the  volume  down  from  my  shelves  and  reads  on 
the  fly-leaf  the  simple  inscription,  "To  B.  R.  P. 
d.d.  W.  B.  H.,"  in  his  little  crooked  and  crabbed 
writing,  must  see  in  it  the  eloquent  clue  to  his 
personality  that  it  is  to  me. 

Ill 

I  have  said  that  Henley  seldom  came  to  us — 
as  indeed  he  seldom  went  anywhere  or,  for  that 
matter,  seldom  stayed  at  home — without  a  con 
tingent  of  his  Young  Men  in  attendance.  I  do 
not  believe  I  could  ever  have  gone  to  his  rooms 
in  Great  College  Street,  or  to  his  house  at  Addis- 
combe,  or  in  later,  sadder  days  to  the  other, 
rather  gloomy,  house  on  the  riverside  at  Barnes, 
— turned  into  some  sort  of  college  the  last  time 
I  passed,  with  a  long  bare  students'  table  in  the 

149 


NIGHTS 

downstairs  dining-room  where  I  had  been 
warmed  and  thrilled  by  so  much  exhilarating  talk, 
— that  some  of  his  Young  Men  were  not  there  be 
fore  me  or  did  not  come  in  before  I  left.  In 
London,  on  his  journeys  to  and  fro,  they  sur 
rounded  him  as  a  bodyguard.  If  on  those  old 
Thursday  nights,  his  was  the  loudest  voice,  theirs 
played  up  to  it  untiringly.  There  were  no  half 
measures  about  them.  As  warriors  in  the  cause 
of  art  and  literature,  they  reserved  nothing  from 
their  devotion  to  their  leader,  they  exhausted 
every  possibility  of  that  form  of  flattery  usually 
considered  the  greatest.  They  fought  Henley's 
battles  with  hardly  less  valour,  hardly  milder 
roaring.  On  Thursday,  they  had  been  working 
with  him  all  day  and  all  evening,  they  probably 
had  lunched  together,  and  dined  together,  and 
yet  so  far  from  showing  any  desire  to  separate 
on  their  arrival  in  our  rooms,  they  immediately 
grouped  themselves  again  round  Henley. 

It  was  curious,  anyway,  how  strong  the 
tendency  was  with  all  the  company  to  break  up 
into  groups.  Work  was  the  common  bond,  but 
there  was  also  a  special  bond  in  each  different 
kind  of  work.  On  my  round  as  hostess  I  was  sure 
to  find  the  writers  in  one  corner,  the  artists  in 
another,  the  architects  in  a  third — though  to  this 
150 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

day  it  is  a  question  with  me  why  we  should  have 
had  enough  architects  to  make  a  group  and,  more 
puzzling,  why,  having  them,  they  should  have 
been  so  unpopular,  unless  it  was  because  of  their 
air  of  prosperity  and  respectability,  always  as 
correct  in  appearance  as  if  there  was  a  possible 
client  at  the  door.  I  can  still  recall  the  triumph 
ant  glee,  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  cause,  of 
one  of  Henley's  Young  Men  the  Thursday  night 
he  came  to  tell  me  that  all  the  architects  were 
safe  out  of  the  way  in  the  studio,  and  "I  have 
shut  both  doors,"  he  added,  "and  now  that  we 
are  rid  of  them  we  can  talk."  As  if  any  of 
Henley's  Young  Men  under  any  circumstances 
ever  did  anything  else. 

Some  of  Henley's  staff,  if  I  remember,  never 
came  to  us,  others  came  only  occasionally,  but  a 
few  failed  us  as  rarely  as  Henley  himself.  The 
Thursday  night  was  the  exception  that  did  not 
see  Charles  Whibley  at  Henley's  right  hand  even 
as  he  was  in  the  pages  of  the  National  Observer, 
not  merely  ready  for  the  fight  but  provoking  it, 
insisting  upon  it,  forcing  it,  boisterous  in  battle, 
looking  like  an  undergraduate,  talking  like  a  past- 
master  of  the  art  of  invective,  with  a  little  stam 
mer  that  gave  point  to  his  lightest  commonplace. 
Rarely  lagging  very  far  behind  came  Marriott 

151 


NIGHTS 

Watson,  young,  tall,  blonde,  good-looking — a 
something  exotic,  foreign  in  the  good  looks  that  I 
put  down  to  New  Zealand,  for  I  suppose  New 
Zealand  as  well  as  America  has  produced  a  type — 
not  quite  so  truculent  in  talk  as  in  print,  more 
inclined  to  fight  with  a  smile.  A  third  was  Wil 
fred  Pollock,  forgotten  save  by  his  friends  I  am 
afraid;  and  a  fourth,  Vernon  Blackburn,  who 
began  life  as  a  monk  at  Port  Augustus  and  fin 
ished  it  as  a  musical  critic,  he  too  I  fear  scarcely 
more  than  a  name ;  and  a  fifth,  Jack  Stuart,  and  a 
sixth,  Harold  Parsons,  and  a  seventh,  and  an 
eighth,  and  I  can  hardly  now  say  how  many  more 
long  since  dead,  now  for  me  vague  ghosts  from 
out  that  old  past  so  overflowing  with  life. 

When  William  Waldorf  Astor  bought  the 
Pall  Mall  Gazette  and  started  the  weekly  Pall 
Mall  Budget  and  the  monthly  Pall  Mall  Maga 
zine,  he  presented  Henley  with  two  or  three  new 
Young  Men  and  added  to  our  company  on  Thurs 
day  nights,  little  as  he  had  either  of  these  achieve 
ments  in  view.  His  plunge  into  newspaper  pro 
prietorship  was  one  of  the  newspaper  ventures 
that  counted  for  most  in  the  Nineties.  It  was  a 
venture  inclining  to  amateurism  in  detail,  but 
run  on  business,  not  romantic,  lines  and  there 
fore  it  was  less  talked  about  than  those  purely 
152 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

amateur  plunges  into  journalism  which  gave  the 
Nineties  so  much  of  their  picturesqueness.  But 
all  the  same,  we  saw  revolution  in  it,  the  pos 
sibility  of  wholesale  regeneration,  the  inaugura 
tion  of  a  new  era,  when  "sham"  would  be  ex 
posed,  and  " Bleat"  silenced,  and  art  grow  " Hu 
man"  once  more.  In  the  Budget  and  the  Maga 
zine  it  was  likewise  to  be  proved  that  America 
and  France  were  not  alone  in  understanding  and 
valuing  the  art  of  illustration : — vain  hopes ! 

Henley  and  his  Young  Men  rejoiced  in  a  new 
sphere  for  fighting,  certain  of  a  brilliant  victory, 
since  they  were  to  have  a  share  in  the  command. 
Astor,  with  a  fine  fling  for  independence — his 
only  one  in  public — or  else  with  that  old  gentle 
manly  dream  of  a  newspaper  "  written  by  gentle 
men  for  gentlemen,"  had  captured  his  editors  in 
regions  where  editors  are  not  usually  hunted — 
Henry  Oust,  heir  to  a  title,  for  the  Gazette,  Lord 
Frederick  Hamilton,  his  title  already  inherited, 
for  the  Magazine.  Fleet  Street  shrugged  its 
shoulders,  laughed  a  little,  not  believing  title  and 
rank  to  have  the  same  value  in  journalism  as  in 
society.  Gust,  to  do  him  justice,  agreed  with 
Fleet  Street,  and,  knowing  that  he  was  without 
experience,  had  the  sense  to  appeal  for  help  to 
those  with  it.  By  good  luck  he  went  to  Henley, 

153 


NIGHTS 

who  was  not  free  to  do  much  for  the  paper  save 
give  it  his  advice,  offer  it  those  of  his  Young  Men 
whom  he  could  spare,  and  take  under  his  wing 
the  new  Young  Men  it  invented  for  itself.  When 
new  enthusiasts  fell  into  Henley's  train,  it  was 
never  long  before  they  followed  him  to  Bucking 
ham  Street  on  Thursday  nights. 

I  could  scarcely  label  as  anybody's  Young 
Man  Iwan-Miiller,  huge,  half  Russian,  half  Eng 
lish,  all  good  comrade,  who  had  come  up  from 
Manchester  and  the  editorship  of  a  leading  paper 
there  to  be  Gust's  Assistant  Editor.  He  was 
nearly  Henley's  contemporary,  but  he  did  not, 
for  such  a  trifle  as  age,  let  any  one  of  Henley's 
Young  Men  exceed  him  in  devotion,  and  his  laugh 
became  the  unfailing  accompaniment  of  Henley's 
talk,  so  much  so  that  I  am  convinced  if  Henley 
still  leads  the  talk  in  the  land  beyond  the  grave, 
Iwan-Miiller  still  punctuates  it  with  the  big  brac 
ing  laugh  that  was  as  big  as  himself. 

At  the  other  extreme,  younger  than  the  young 
est  of  the  Young  Men  he  joined,  came  George  W. 
Steevens,  fresh  from  Oxford,  Balliol  Prize 
Scholar,  shy  and  carrying  it  off,  in  the  Briton's 
way,  with  appalling  rudeness  and  more  appalling 
silence.  I  remember  J.,  upon  whose  nerves  as 
well  as  mine  this  silence  got,  taking  me  apart  one 
154 


Photograph  by  Frederick  Hollyer 

IWAN-MULLER  AND  GEORGE  W.  STEEVENS 


- 

> 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

Thursday  evening  to  tell  me  that  if  that  young 
Oxford  prig  was  too  superior  to  talk  to  anybody, 
why  then  he  was  too  superior  to  come  to  us  at  all, 
and  he  must  be  made  to  understand  it.  Eventu 
ally  he  learned  to  talk,  with  us  anyway — he  was 
always  a  silent  man  with  most  people.  And  I 
got  to  know  him  well,  to  like  him,  to  admire  him, 
— to  respect  him  too  through  the  long  summer 
when  his  friends  were  doing  their  best  to  dis 
suade  him  from  his  proposed  marriage  with  a 
woman  many  years  older  than  he.  The  men  of 
the  National  Observer  and  the  Pall  Mall  were 
such  keen  fighters  that  they  could  not  be  kind  or 
sentimental — and  they  grew  maudlinly  senti 
mental  over  Steevens's  engagement — without  a 
fight  for  it.  They  thought  he  was  making  a  mis 
take,  forgetting  that  it  was  his  business,  not 
theirs,  if  he  was.  He  fought  alone  against  them, 
but  he  held  his  place  like  a  man  and  won.  Our 
Thursday  nights  had  come  to  an  end  before  he 
went  to  America,  to  Germany,  to  Khartoum  with 
Kitchener,  to  South  Africa,  where  he  passed  into 
the  great  silence  that  no  protest  of  ours,  or  any 
man's  can  break.  If  his  work  was  overrated,  he 
himself  as  I  knew  him  was  as  kind  and  brave  as 
in  Henley's  verse  to  his  memory. 

Others  of  the  same  group,  the  writers'  group, 

155 


NIGHTS 

who  flit  across  the  scene  in  my  memory  are  less 
intimately  associated  with  Henley.  Harold 
Frederic  wrote  for  him  occasionally — wrote  few 
things,  indeed,  more  amusing  than  his  Observa 
tions  in  Philistia,  a  satire  first  published  in  the 
National  Observer — but  his  chief  business  was 
the  novel  and  the  New  York  Times  correspond 
ence.  He  was  an  able  man,  something  more  than 
the  typical  clever  American  journalist,  a  writer 
of  books  that  deserve  to  be  remembered  but  that 
have  hardly  outlived  him.  He  was  an  amusing 
companion,  the  sort  of  man  it  was  delightful  to 
run  across  by  chance  in  unexpected  places,  for 
which  reason  my  most  agreeable  recollections  of 
him  are  not  in  Buckingham  Street  but  in  the 
streets  and  cafes  of  Berlin  and  Vienna  that  sum 
mer  he  was  studying  Jews  in  Southeastern 
Europe,  and  first  knew  there  were  Jews  in  Vienna 
when  J.,  who  afterwards  began  to  study  them  for 
himself,  introduced  him  to  the  Juden  Gasse.  He 
liked  a  good  dinner,  and  gave  us  more  than  one, 
and  he  was  an  amusing  talker  over  it  and  also  on 
our  Thursday  nights  until  he  got  to  the  stage  he 
always  did  get  to  of  telling  tales  of  his  boyhood 
when  he  carried  milk  to  the  big  people  in  his  part 
of  the  Mohawk  Valley,  was  dazzled  by  his  first 
vision  of  Brussels  carpet  on  their  floors,  and 
156 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

determined  to  have  Brussels  carpet  on  his  own 
before  he  was  many  years  older,  and  I  can  answer 
for  it  that,  by  the  time  I  knew  him,  his  house  was 
all  Brussels  carpet  from  top  to  bottom.  They 
were  most  creditable  tales  and  entertaining  too 
at  a  first  hearing,  but  they  staled,  as  all  tales 
must,  with  repetition. 

S.  R.  Crockett  never  wrote  anything  for  Hen 
ley.  Henley  would  have  been  outraged  by  the 
bare  suggestion,  and  Crockett  the  writer  was 
never  handled  with  the  gloves  by  Henley's  Young 
Men  in  the  National  Observer.  But  with  Crock 
ett  himself  they  had  no  quarrel.  We  all  liked 
him — a  large  red  and  white  Scotchman,  the  Scots 
strong  in  every  word  he  spoke,  hustling  us  all 
off  for  a  fish  dinner  at  Greenwich  on  the  strength 
of  his  first  big  cheque  for  royalties ;  or  as  happy 
to  spend  the  evening  sitting  on  our  floor  and 
diverting  William  Perm  with  the  ball  of  paper  on 
the  end  of  a  string  that  William  never  wearied 
of  pursuing,  partly  for  his  amusement,  partly 
because,  with  his  innate  politeness,  he  knew  it 
contributed  to  ours. 

I  cannot  imagine  a  Thursday  night  without 
Rosamund  Marriott-Watson, — Graham  R.  Tom- 
son  as  she  was  then, — beautiful,  reminiscent  of 
Rossetti  in  her  tall,  willowy  slimness,  with  her 

157 


NIGHTS 

long  neck  like  a  column  and  her  great  halo  of 
black  hair  and  her  big  brown  eyes,  appealing,  con- 
finding,  beseeching.  Fashion  as  she,  the  poetess, 
extolled  it  week  by  week  in  the  National  Observer, 
became  a  poem  with  a  stately  measure  in  frocks 
and  hats,  a  flowing  rhythm  in  every  frill  and 
furbelow.  I  lost  sight  of  her  later,  for  reasons 
neither  here  nor  there,  but  it  pleases  me  to 
know  that  not  many  months  before  her  death 
she  looked  back  to  those  years  as  her  happiest 
when  weekly,  almost  daily,  she  was  going  up  and 
down  the  Buckingham  Street  stairs  which  her 
ghost,  she  said,  must  haunt  until  they  go  the  way 
of  too  many  old  stairs  leading  up  to  old  London 
chambers.  Violet  Hunt  was  almost  as  faithful. 
And  both  contributed,  as  I  did,  a  weekly  column — 
mine  that  amazing  article  on  cookery — to  the  Pall 
Mail's  daily  Wares  of  Autolycus,  daily  written 
by  women  and  I  daresay  believed  by  us  to  be  the 
most  entertaining  array  of  unconsidered  trifles 
that  any  Autolycus  had  ever  offered  to  any  eager 
world.  Graham  Tomson  was  even  moved  to  com 
memorate  our  collaboration  in  verse  the  inspira 
tion  of  which  is  not  far  to  seek,  but  of  which  all  I 
remember  now  is  the  beginning : 

0,  there 's  Mrs.  Meynell  and  Mrs.  Pennell, 

There's  Violet  Hunt  and  me! 
158 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

for  Mrs.  Meynell  contributed  a  fourth  column, 
though  she  never  contributed  her  presence  to 
Buckingham  Street. 

Once  or  twice,  George  Moore  hovered  from 
group  to  group,  his  childlike  eyes  of  wonder  pro 
truding,  wide  open,  and  his  ears  open  too,  no 
doubt,  for,  if  I  can  judge  from  his  several  books 
of  reminiscences,  his  ears  have  rarely  been  closed 
to  talk  going  on  about  him.  After  reading  the 
Irish  series  I  should  suspect  him  not  only  of  well- 
opened  ears  but  of  an  inexhaustible  supply  of 
cuffs  safely  stored  up  his  sleeves.  Bernard  Shaw 
honoured  us  occasionally,  but  I  have  learned  that, 
bent  as  he  is  upon  talking  about  himself,  what 
ever  he  has  to  say,  he  grows  more  fastidious  when 
others  talk  about  him  and  say  what  they  have 
to.  Now  and  then,  Henry  Norman,  journalist, 
his  title  and  seat  in  Parliament  yet  to  come, 
dropped  in.  Now  and  then  Miss  Preston  and 
Miss  Dodge  came,  both  in  London  to  finish  in 
the  British  Museum  the  studies  begun  in  Rome. 
Rarely  a  week  passed  that  James  Gr.  Legge  was 
not  with  us,  then  deep  in  his  work  at  the  Home 
Office  but  full  of  joy  in  everything  that  was  most 
joyful  in  the  Nineties — its  fights,  its  books,  its 
prints,  its  posters.  And  I  might  name  many  be 
sides,  some  forgotten,  some  dead,  some  seen  no 

159 


NIGHTS 

more  by  me,  life  being  often  more  cruel  than 
death  in  the  separations  and  divisions  it  makes. 
But  two  voices  above  the  others  are  almost  as 
persistent  in  my  ears  as  Henley's — the  voices  of 
Bob  Stevenson  and  Henry  Harland. 

IV 

I  have  no  fancy  for  nicknames  in  any  place 
or  at  any  time.  I  have  suffered  too  much  from 
my  own.  But  I  dislike  the  familiarity  of  them 
above  all  in  print.  And  yet,  I  could  no  more 
call  Bob  Stevenson  anything  save  Bob  than  I 
could  venture  to  abbreviate  the  Robert  or  the 
Louis  of  his  cousin.  He  had  been  given  in 
baptism  a  more  formal  name — in  fact,  he  had 
been  given  three  of  unquestioned  dignity :  Eobert 
Alan  Mowbray.  But  I  doubt  if  anybody  had  ever 
known  him  by  them  or  if  he  had  ever  used  them 
himself.  When  he  wrote  he  signed  his  fine  array 
of  initials,  and  when  he  was  not  K.  A.  M.  S.,  he 
was  Bob. 

It  seems  to  me  now  a  curious  chance,  as  well 
as  a  piece  of  good  luck,  that  the  two  most  eloquent 
of  the  company  in  Louis  Stevenson's  Talk  and 
Talkers  should  have  come  to  us  on  our  Thursday 
nights,  for  Bob  was  the  Spring-Heeled  Jack,  "the 
160 


Painting  by  Himself 


BOB" STEVENSON 


'   . 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

loud,  copious,  and  intolerant  talker  "  of  that  essay 
just  as  Henley  was  the  Burly. 

He  was  not  more  spring-heeled  in  his  talk 
than  in  evading  capture  for  it.  In  his  later  years 
he  made  few  visits.  If  we  wanted  him  we  had 
to  gather  him  up  by  the  wayside  and  bring  him 
home  with  us.  The  newspaper  work  I  was  doing 
then  took  me  the  rounds  of  the  London  galleries 
on  press  days  and,  as  he  was  the  art  critic  of  the 
Pall  Mall,  I  was  continually  coming  across  him 
busy  about  the  same  work  in  Bond  Street  or 
Piccadilly.  Nothing  pleased  me  better  than  to 
meet  him  on  these  occasions,  for  he  could  make 
the  dull  show  that  I,  in  my  dull  way,  was  finding 
dull  the  most  entrancing  entertainment  in  Lon 
don.  His  every  visit  to  a  gallery  was  to  him  an 
adventure  and  every  picture  a  romance,  and  the 
best  of  it  for  his  friends  was  that  he  would  will 
ingly  share  the  inspiration  which  he,  but  nobody 
else,  could  find  in  the  most  uninspiring  canvas, 
an  inspiration  to  criticism  that  is,  not  to  admira 
tion — he  never  wavered  in  his  allegiance  to  the 
" Almighty  Swells"  of  Art.  Once  he  began  to 
talk  I  did  not  care  to  have  him  stop,  and  I  would 
say,  "Why  not  come  to  Buckingham  Street  with 
me?  You  have  not  seen  J.  for  a  long  while." 
He  would  vow  he  couldn't,  he  must  get  back  to 

11  161 


NIGHTS 

Kew  to  do  Ms  article.  I  would  insist  a  little,  lie 
would  waver  a  little,  and  at  last  he  would  agree 
to  a  minute's  talk  with  J.,  excusing  himself  to 
himself  by  protesting  that  Buckingham  Street 
was  on  his  way  to  the  Underground,  as  it  was 
if  he  chose  to  go  out  of  his  way  to  make  it  so. 
Before  he  knew  it,  the  minute  had  stretched  out 
to  our  dinner  hour  when  he  was  persuaded  that 
he  would  save  time  by  dining  with  us,  as  he  must 
dine  somewhere ;  if  he  went  right  afterwards,  he 
could  still  be  back  at  Kew  in  plenty  of  time  to 
finish  his  article  for  the  last  post. 

Of  course  he  never  did  go  right  afterwards — 
what  talker  ever  did  go  right  anywhere  imme 
diately  after  dinner  when  the  real  talk  is  only 
beginning  ?  Presently  people  would  filter  in  and 
now,  well  adrift  on  the  flood  of  his  own  eloquence, 
nothing  could  interrupt  him  and  he  was  the  last 
to  leave  us,  the  later  it  grew  the  more  easily  in 
duced  to  stay  because  he  knew  that  the  last  train 
and  the  last  post  and  all  the  last  things  of  the  day 
had  gone  and  that  he  must  now  wait  for  the  first 
things  of  the  morning. 

If  I  could  talk  like  Bob  Stevenson  I  would 

not  be  interrupted  either.    Greater  excitement 

could  not  be  had  out  of  the  most  exciting  story 

of  adventure,  and  I  do  not  believe  he  knew  until 

162 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

he  got  to  the  end  any  more  where  his  talk  was 
going  to  lead  him  than  the  reader  knows  how  the 
story  is  going  to  turn  out  until  the  last  chapter 
is  reached.  Louis  Stevenson  described  certain 
qualities  of  his  talk,  but  made  no  effort  to  give 
the  talk  itself,  and  in  Bob's  case,  as  in  Henley's, 
it  was  the  talk  itself  that  counted.  There  was  no 
acting  in  it  as  in  Henley's  or  in  Whistler's — no 
burying  of  his  head  in  his  hands  and  violent 
gestures — no  well-placed  laugh  and  familiar 
phrase.  The  talk  came  in  a  steady  stream, 
laughter  occasionally  in  the  voice,  but  no  break, 
no  movement,  no  dramatic  action — the  sanest 
doctrine  set  forth  with  almost  insane  ingenuity, 
for  he  was  always  the  "wild  dog  outside  the 
kennel"  who  wouldn't  imitate  and  hence  kept 
free,  as  Louis  Stevenson  told  him ;  extraordinary 
things  treated  quite  as  a  matter  of  course; 
brilliant  flashes  of  imbecility  passed  for  cool  well- 
balanced  argument;  until  often  I  would  sud 
denly  gasp,  wondering  into  what  impossible 
world  I  had  strayed  after  him.  And  he  would 
tell  the  most  extravagant  tales,  he  would  confide 
the  most  paradoxical  philosophy,  the  most  topsy 
turvy  ethics,  with  a  fantastic  seriousness,  never 
approached  except  in  the  Arabian  Nights  of 
Prince  Plorizel  for  the  puppets  of  whose  ad- 

163 


NIGHTS 

ventures,  as  for  Spring-Heeled  Jack,  he  was  the 
sitter.  It  was  a  delightful  accomplishment,  but 
dangerous  when  applied  to  actual  life.  I  cannot 
forget  his  advice  once  to  a  friend  on  the  verge  of 
a  serious  step  that  might  sink  him  into  nobody 
could  foretell  what  social  quagmire.  Bob  could 
see  in  it  only  the  adventure  and  the  joy  of  ad 
venture,  not  the  price  fate  was  bound  to  demand 
for  it.  To  him  the  mistake  was  the  unlit  lamp, 
the  ungirt  loin — the  adventure  lost — and,  life 
being  what  it  is,  I  am  not  sure  that  he  was  not 
right. 

I  think  his  talk  struck  me  as  the  more  ex 
traordinary  because  he  looked  so  little  like  it.  In 
the  Nineties  he  had  taken  to  the  Jaegers  that 
usually  stand  for  vegetarianism,  teetotalism, 
hygiene — all  the  drab  things  of  life.  He  wore 
even  a  Jaeger  hat  and  Jaeger  boots — as  complete 
an  advertisement  for  Jaeger  as  old  Joseph  Pins- 
bury  was  for  his  Doctor.  No  costume  could  have 
seemed  so  altogether  out  of  character  with  the 
fantastic,  delightful,  extravagant  creature  in 
side  of  it,  though,  really,  none  could  have  been 
more  in  character.  It  had  always  been  Bob's 
way  to  play  the  game  of  life  by  dressing  the  part 
of  the  moment.  Before  I  met  him  I  had  been 
told  of  his  influence  over  Louis  Stevenson,  whose 
164 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

debt  to  him  for  ideas  and  conceits  was  said  to 
be  immeasurable,  and  nobody  who  knew  Bob  has 
doubted  it.  I  feel  convinced  that  Louis  owed  to 
him  also  his  touch  of  the  fantastic,  the  unusual, 
in  dress,  since  it  belonged  so  entirely  to  Bob  and 
was  no  less  entirely  in  keeping  with  his  attitude 
towards  the  universe  and  his  place  in  it — his  ten 
dency  of  always  probing  the  real  for  the  romantic. 
Knowing  one  cousin  and  the  books  of  the 
other,  I  should  say  it  was  Bob  who,  in  their  child 
hood,  originated  the  drama  of  the  Lantern- 
Bearers  and  the  evil-smelling  lantern  under  the 
great  coat,  symbol  of  adventure  and  daring — that 
it  was  Bob  who,  in  their  gay  youth,  evolved  the 
black  flannel  shirts  to  which  they  owed  the  honour 
of  being,  with  Lord  Salisbury,  the  only  Britons 
ever  refused  admission  to  the  Casino  at  Monte 
Carlo,  and  which  were  worn  by  the  Stennis 
Brothers  in  The  Wrecker, — that  it  was  Bob  who 
impressed  upon  Louis  the  importance  of  being 
dressed  for  the  scene  until  he  surpassed  himself 
in  his  amazing  get-up  for  the  Epilogue  to  an  In 
land  Voyage.  Bob's  own  disguises  rarely  got  into 
print,  but  in  Will  Low's  Chronicle  of  Friendships 
there  is  a  photograph  of  him  in  his  student  days, 
figuring  as  a  sort  of  brigand  of  old-fashioned 
comic  opera,  that  shows  he  did  not  from  the  be- 

165 


NIGHTS 

ginning  shirk  the  obligations  he  imposed  upon 
others.  I  remember  a  huge  ring,  inherited  from 
his  father  to  whom  the  Czar  had  given  it  for 
engineering  services  in  Russia,  which  he  kept 
for  formal  occasions  so  that  when  I  saw  it  cov 
ering  his  finger,  almost  his  hand,  at  the  dinner 
to  which  we  had  both  been  invited,  I  understood 
that  to  him  the  occasion  was  one  of  ceremony 
and  he  never  failed  to  regulate  his  conduct  ac 
cordingly.  I  was  glad  the  ring  did  not  appear 
on  our  Thursday  nights,  so  much  freer  of  for 
mality,  and  therefore  more  amusing,  was  he  with 
out  it.  The  large  perfection  of  his  Jaegers  in 
his  last  years  was  no  less  symbolic;  in  them  he 
was  dressed  for  the  role  of  middle  age  which  he, 
who  had  the  gift  of  eternal  youth,  had  already 
reached  when  I  first  knew  him.  It  was  a  role  to 
which,  at  the  time,  I  attributed  his  concern  about 
his  health — his  anxiety  to  know  if  we,  any  of  us, 
had  influenza  before  he  would  come  home  with 
me,  his  rush  from  the  room  or  the  house  at  a  sniff 
or  a  sneeze.  The  truth  is  Bob  shared  Henley's 
love  of  the  visible  sign,  or  it  may  be  nearer  the 
truth  to  say  that  he  shared  his  own  love  of  it  with 
Henley  and  his  cousin  who  rarely,  either  of  them, 
wrote  anything  in  which  it  is  not  felt. 

But  Henley  loved  the  visible  sign  for  itself — 
166 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

the  romance  was  actually  in  the  tap-tap  of  the 
blind  man's  staff,  in  the  pagan  obelisk  towering 
above  the  Christian  river.  Bob  loved  the  visible 
sign  for  the  hint  it  gave  to  his  imagination,  the 
adventure  upon  which  it  sent  him  galloping.  He 
could  build  up  a  romance  out  of  anything  and 
nothing — he  was  the  modern  Scheherezade,  but, 
as  time  went  on,  with  nobody  to  repeat  his  stories. 
He  could  have  made  the  fortune  of  any  number 
of  young  men  with  their  cuffs  ready,  but  the  only 
young  man  who  ever  did  use  his  cuff  was  Louis 
Stevenson  when  they  were  young  together.  Bob 
had  not  the  energy  to  put  down  his  stories  him 
self — he  would  not  have  written  a  word  for  pub 
lication  had  he  not  been  forced  to.  For  him  the 
romance  would  have  been  lost  in  the  labour  of 
recording  it,  and,  anyway,  he  was  always  con 
sistent  in  not  doing  more  work  than  he  was 
obliged  to  in  order  to  live.  He  had  not  the  talent 
for  combining,  or  identifying,  his  pleasure  with 
his  work.  Painting  was  the  profession  for  which 
he  had  been  trained,  but  with  it  he  amused  him 
self  and,  as  far  as  I  know,  never  made  a  penny 
out  of  it.  When  he  talked  he  would  have  lost 
his  joy  in  the  invention,  the  fabrication,  had  he 
thought  he  must  turn  it  to  profit.  Of  the  curious 
twist  of  his  imagination  there  remains  but  the 

167 


NIGHTS 

faint  reflection  here  and  there  in  Prince  Plorizel 
and  the  romantic  adventurers  swaggering  and 
talking  splendid  nonsense  through  the  earlier 
tales  by  Louis  Stevenson,  whose  books  grew  less 
and  less  fantastic  as  his  path  and  Bob's  spread 
wider  apart.  Even  in  the  earlier  tales  Bob  will 
not  be  discovered  by  future  generations  who  have 
lost  the  key. 

For  the  sake  of  posterity,  if  not  for  my  own, 
I  would  have  been  wiser  on  Thursday  nights  to 
think  less  of  my  next  morning's  article  than  of 
his  inventions.  As  it  is,  I  retain  merely  a  general 
impression  and  an  occasional  detail  of  his  talk. 
I  am  glad  I  remember,  for  one  thing,  his  unfail 
ing  prejudice  in  favour  of  his  friends,  so  amiable 
was  the  side  of  his  character  it  revealed — though 
it  revealed  also  his  weakness  as  critic.  He  had  a 
positive  genius  for  veiling  prosaic  facts  with 
romance  where  the  people  he  liked  were  con 
cerned.  How  often  have  we  laughed  at  his  ami 
ability  to  a  painter  of  the  commonplace  who  had 
happened  to  be  his  fellow-student  in  Paris,  whose 
work,  as  a  consequence,  his  friendly  imagination 
filled  with  the  fine  things  that  to  us  were  con 
spicuously  missing,  and  whose  name  he  dragged 
into  every  criticism  he  wrote,  even  into  his  Mono- 
168 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

graph  on  Velasquez,  nor  could  lie  be  laughed,  or 
argued  out  of  it. 

And  I  am  glad  I  remember  another  trick  of 
his  imagination,  though  it  was  like  to  end  in 
disaster  for  us  all,  so  equally  characteristic  was 
it  of  his  genius  in  weaving  romance  from  prose. 
He  was  talking  one  evening  of  wine,  upon  which 
he  had  large — Continental — ideas,  declaring  he 
would  not  have  it  in  his  house  unless  all  his 
family,  including  the  servants,  could  drink  it 
without  stint  and  also  without  thought  of  ex 
pense — though,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  his  house 
hold  staff  consisted  chiefly  of  a  decent  old  Scotch 
woman  who  would  have  scorned  wine  as  a  device 
of  the  foreigner.  The  triumphant  ring  of  his 
voice  is  still  in  my  ears  as  he  announced  that  he 
had  found  a  merchant  who  could  provide  him 
with  just  the  wine  he  wanted,  good,  pure,  light, 
white  or  red,  an  ordinary  brand  for  sevenpence  a 
bottle,  a  superior  brand  for  eightpence. 

The  marvel  of  it  all  was  that  we  believed  in 
that  wine  and  when  the  company  left  for  home, 
the  merchant's  address  was  in  almost  everybody's 
pocket.  It  was  not  a  bad  wine  in  the  sample 
bottles  J.  and  I  received  a  day  or  two  later,  noth 
ing  much  to  boast  of,  but  harmless.  For  the 
further  cheapness  promised  we  next  ordered  it 

169 


NIGHTS 

by  the  case,  one  of  red  and  one  of  white — a  rare 
bargain  we  thought.  But  in  the  end  it  was  the 
most  expensive  wine  it  has  ever  been  our  mis 
fortune  to  invest  in.  For  when  it  came  in  cases 
it  was  so  potent  that  nobody  could  drink  as  much 
as  a  glass  without  going  to  sleep.  I  never  had  it 
analyzed,  but,  after  a  couple  of  bottles,  I  did  not 
dare  to  put  it  on  the  table  again,  or  to  use  it  even 
for  cooking  or  as  vinegar.  To  balance  our  ac 
counts,  we  did  without  wine  of  any  kind,  or  at 
any  price,  for  many  a  week  to  come.  But  we 
had  our  revenge.  In  the  course  of  a  few  months 
Bob's  wine  merchant  was  summoned  before  the 
magistrate  for  manufacturing  Bordeaux  and 
Burgundies  out  of  Greek  currants  and  more  rep 
rehensible  materials  in  the  backyard  of  his  un 
pretending  riverside  house,  and  it  was  one  of 
our  Thursday  night  fellow  victims  who  had  the 
pleasure  of  exposing  him  in  the  Daily  Chronicle. 
Bob  did  not  share  our  resentment.  He  had  his 
pleasure  in  the  charm  his  imagination  gave  to 
every  drop  of  the  few  bottles  he  drank  and  man 
aged  not  to  die  of. 

I  began  to  notice  in  the  galleries  and  on  Thurs 
day  nights  that  Bob  became  more  and  more  en 
grossed  in  the  question  of  his  health  and  quicker 
to  fly  at  a  sniff  or  a  sneeze.    The  time  came  when 
170 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

no  persuasion  could  bring  him  home  with  me. 
He  described  symptoms  rather  than  pictures,  his 
interest  in  anything  in  the  shape  of  paint  weak 
ened.  I  fancied  that  he  was  romancing,  that  he 
was  playing  the  hypochondriac  as  part  of  his  role 
of  middle-age,  and  I  thought  it  a  pity.  It  might 
provide  a  new  entertainment  for  him,  but  it  de 
prived  us  of  the  entertainment  of  his  company. 
Then  I  hardly  met  him  at  all,  or  if  I  did  he  was 
too  nervous  to  linger  before  each  painting  or 
drawing,  to  gossip  about  it  and  everything  under 
the  sun.  He  would  walk  through  the  galleries 
with  one  leg  dragging  a  little — the  visible  sign, 
I  would  say  to  myself,  amused  to  see  that  he 
could  turn  romance  into  reality  as  easily  as 
reality  into  romance.  He  would  start  for  Kew 
right  off,  without  any  loitering,  without  any 
delicious  pretending  that  he  was  going  in  the  very 
next  train  and  then  not  going  until  the  very  next 
train  meant  the  very  next  day.  But  before  long 
I  learned  that  there  was  no  romance  about  it, 
that  it  was  grim  reality,  the  grimmer  to  me  be 
cause  I  had  taken  it  so  lightly.  His  illness  was 
mere  rumour  at  first,  for  few  people  went  to  his 
house  in  far  Kew  to  see  him.  It  was  more  than 
rumour  when  he  ceased  altogether  to  appear  in 
the  galleries,  for  we  knew  he  was  dependent  upon 

171 


NIGHTS 

art  criticism  for  his  butter,  if  not  for  most  of  Ms 
bread.  I  had  not  got  as  far  as  belief  in  Ms  illness 
before  the  news  came  that  he  had  set  out  upon 
the  greatest  adventure  of  all  and  that  no  more 
would  Buckingham  Street  be  transfigured  in  the 
light  of  Ms  romancing,  glorified  by  his  inex 
haustible  fancy.  I  owed  him  much:  the  charm 
of  the  personality  of i '  this  delightful  and  wonder 
ful  creature "  in  Henley's  words  of  him,  pleasure 
from  his  talk,  stimulus  from  Ms  criticism,  and  I 
wish  I  had  had  the  common  sense  to  do  what  I 
could  to  make  him  live  as  a  pleasure  and  a  stimu 
lus  to  others.  My  mistake  on  our  Thursday 
nights  was  to  keep  my  cuff  clean,  my  note-book 
empty. 

V 

In  the  case  of  Henry  Harland  my  conscience 
makes  me  no  such  reproach.  If  ever  a  man  be 
came  his  own  Boswell  it  was  he,  though  I  do  not 
suppose  anything  was  further  from  his  mind 
when  he  sat  down  to  write.  But  as  he  talked, 
so  he  wrote — he  could  not  help  himself — and  all 
who  have  read  the  witty,  gay,  whimsical,  fan 
tastic  talk  of  Ms  heroes  and  heroines,  especially 
in  Ms  last  three  books,  have  listened  to  Mm.  He, 
no  less  than  Ms  Adrian  Willes — even  if  quite 
another  man  was  the  model — never  understood 
172 


Sketch  by  Aubrey  Beardsley 


HENRY  HARLAND 


' 


'. .    "  .    •     • 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

how  it  was  possible  for  people  to  be  bored. 
Flaubert  once  said  in  a  letter,  "Life  is  so  hideous 
that  the  only  way  of  enduring  it  is  to  avoid  it." 
But  Harland  believed  in  plunging  into  it  head 
long  and  getting  everything  that  is  to  be  got  out 
of  it.  He  had  eyes  to  see  that  "life  is  just  one 
sequence  of  many-coloured  astonishments, "  and 
the  colours  were  the  gayer  when  he  came  to  our 
Thursday  nights  because  he  was  still  so  young. 

He  and  Mrs.  Harland  had  been  in  London 
only  a  few  years,  his  career  as  Sydney  Luska  was 
behind  him,  his  career  as  Henry  Harland  was  be 
fore  him,  he  was  full  of  life,  energy,  enthusiasm, 
deep  in  long  novels,  busy  for  the  Daily  Chronicle, 
writing  as  hard  as  he  talked,  and  he  talked  every 
bit  as  hard  as  Bob  Stevenson. 

Like  Bob,  he  seemed  to  love  talk  more  than 
anything,  but  he  must  have  loved  work  as  Bob 
never  loved  it,  for  he  put  the  quality  of  his  talk 
into  what  he  wrote.  Bob  Stevenson's  writing 
never  suggested  his  talk.  I  might  find  his  point 
of  view  and  his  amiable  prejudices  in  his  criticism 
and  his  books — only  he  could  have  written  his 
Velasquez  quite  as  he  wrote  it — but  nowhere  do 
I  find  a  touch,  a  trace  of  the  Lantern-Bearer  or 
Prince  Florizel  or  the  Young  Man  with  the  Cream 
Tarts.  But  I  never  get  far  away  from  Harland 

173 


NIGHTS 

in  his  novels.  I  re-read  them  a  short  time  ago, 
and  they  were  a  magic  carpet  to  bear  me  straight 
back  to  Buckingham  Street,  and  the  crowded, 
smoky  rooms  overlooking  the  river,  and  the  old 
years  when  we  were  all  young  together. 

A  delightful  thing  about  Harland  was  that  he 
did  not  care  to  monopolize  the  talk,  to  talk  every 
body  else  down.  On  the  contrary,  I  doubt  if  he 
was  ever  happier  than  when  he  roused,  provoked, 
stimulated  everybody  to  talk  with  him.  I  re 
member  in  particular  an  evening  when  J.  and  I 
were  dining  with  him  and  Mrs.  Harland  at  their 
Kensington  flat,  and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Edmund  Gosse 
were  there,  and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  W.  J.  Fisher — 
Fisher  was  then  editor  of  the  Daily  Chronicle  and 
Mrs.  Fisher  was  still  Adrienne  Dayrolles  on  the 
stage — and  Louis  Austen,  a  handy  man  of  jour 
nalism,  and  when,  happening  to  turn  for  a  minute 
from  Harland  by  whom  I  was  sitting,  and  to  look 
round  the  table,  I  found  I  was  the  only  one  of  the 
party  not  talking — and  we  had  got  no  farther 
than  the  fish!  But  I  flatter  myself  I  have  few 
rivals  as  an  accomplished  listener. 

Often  Harland  had  the  floor  to  himself  simply 

because  everybody  else  wanted  to  listen  too. 

When  what  he  calls  in  one  of  his  books  "the 

restorative  spirit  of  nonsense"  descended  upon 

174 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

Mm,  his  talk  could  whisk  off  the  whole  Thursday 
night  crowd,  before  they  knew  it,  to  that  delect 
able  Land  of  Nonsense  to  which  he  was  an  in 
spired  guide.  Nobody  understood  better  how  to 
set  up  the  absurd  and  the  impossible  in  the  garb 
of  truth.  An  old  admirer  of  his  reminded  me 
not  long  since  of  a  tale  he  used  to  tell,  almost 
with  tears  in  his  voice,  of  the  petit  patissier  who 
was  hurrying  through  the  streets  of  Paris  to 
deliver  brioches  and  tarts  to  customers  and  who, 
crossing  the  Boulevards,  was  knocked  down  by 
a  big  three-horse  omnibus.  And  as  the  crowd 
collected  and  the  sergent-de-ville  arrived,  he  was 
seen  painfully  and  deliberately  freeing  his  one 
uninjured  arm,  feeling  carefully  in  pocket  after 
pocket,  and,  as  he  drew  his  last  breath,  holding 
up  triumphantly  the  exact  number  of  francs  the 
Parisian  on  foot  then  had  to  pay  for  venturing 
rashly  to  get  in  the  way  of  the  Paris  driver.  And 
Harland  told  it  all  with  such  eloquence  that  it 
was  some  minutes  before  those  who  listened 
realised  he  was  laughing  and  began  to  laugh  with 
him.  And  the  tale  was  typical  of  many  others 
he  loved  to  tell.  As  his  talk  led  the  way  to  the 
Land  of  Nonsense,  so  he  himself  could  of  a  sudden 
whirl  us  all  off  to  a  restaurant,  or  a  park,  or  an 
excursion  we  had  not  thought  of  an  hour,  a 

175 


NIGHTS 

minute  before.  Many  a  time,  instead  of  sitting 
solemnly  at  home  reading  or  working  as  we  had 
meant  to,  we  would  be  going  down  the  river  in 
a  penny  steamboat,  or  drinking  coffee  at  the  Cafe 
Royal  or  tea  in  Kensington  Gardens — but  Har- 
land  as  an  inspired  guide  was  at  his  best  in  Paris 
I  always  thought,  perhaps  because  in  Paris  he 
had  so  much  larger  scope  than  in  London. 

He  impressed  one  as  a  man  who  never  tired, 
or  who  never  gave  in  to  being  tired,  either  at  work 
or  at  play — a  man  who,  knowing  his  days  would 
be  few  on  this  earth,  found  each  fair  as  it  passed 
and,  if  he  could  not  bid  it  stay,  was  at  least  de 
termined  to  fill  it  as  full  as  it  would  hold.  There 
was  no  resisting  his  restless  energy  when  with 
him,  and  it  was  because  he  could  so  little  resist 
it  himself,  that  he  was  continually  seeking  new 
outlets — new  forms  for  its  expression.  He  had 
just  the  temperament  to  take  up  with  the  mode 
of  the  Nineties  that  drove  the  Young  Men  to 
asserting  themselves  and  upholding  their  doc 
trines  in  papers  and  magazines  of  their  own.  The 
pedant  may  trace  the  fashion  back  to  the  ILobby- 
Horse  of  the  Eighties,  or,  in  a  further  access  of 
pedantry  to  the  Germ  of  the  early  Fifties.  He 
may  follow  its  growth  as  late  as  the  Blast  of 
yesterday  and  The  Gypsy  of  to-day.  But  I  do 
176 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

not  have  to  go  further  than  my  book  shelves,  I 
have  only  to  look  and  see  there  the  Dial  and  the 
Yellow  Book  and  the  Savoy  and  the  Butterfly 
and  the  Pageant  and  the  Dome  and  the  Ever 
green,  each  with  its  special  train  of  memories  and 
associations,  and  I  know  better  than  the  greatest 
pedant  of  them  all  that  the  fashion,  no  matter 
when  it  began,  no  matter  when  it  may  end,  be 
longs  as  essentially  to  the  Nineties  as  the  fashion 
for  the  crinoline  belongs  to  the  Sixties.  Harland 
was  not  original  in  wanting  to  set  up  a  pulpit  for 
himself — the  originality  was  in  the  design  for  it. 
The  Yellow  Book  was  not  like  any  other  quarterly 
from  which  any  other  young  man  or  group  did 
his  preaching. 

VI 

Harland  shared  his  pulpit.  He  would  not 
have  found  the  same  design  for  it  without 
Beardsley,  nor  would  our  Thursday  nights,  where 
a  good  deal  of  that  design  was  thought  out  and 
talked  out,  have  been  the  same  without  Beardsley. 
I  would  find  it  hard,  even  had  there  been  no 
Yellow  Book,  not  to  remember  Harland  and 
Beardsley  together.  For  it  was  from  Mrs.  Har 
land  that  we  first  heard  of  the  wonderful  youth, 
unknown  still,  an  insignificant  clerk  in  some  In- 
12  177 


NIGHTS 

surance  Company,  who  made  the  most  amazing 
drawings — it  was  she  who  first  sent  him  to  us  that 
J.  might  look  at  his  work  and  help  him  to  escape 
from  the  office  he  hated  and  from  the  toils  of 
Burne-Jones  and  the  Kelmscott  Press  in  which 
he  was  entangled. 

He  came,  the  first  time,  one  afternoon  in  the 
winter  dusk — a  boy,  tall  and  slight,  long  narrow 
pale  clean-shaven  face,  hair  parted  in  the  middle 
and  hanging  over  his  forehead,  nose  prominent, 
eyes  alight,  certain  himself  of  the  worth  of  his 
drawings,  too  modest  not  to  fear  that  other  artists 
might  not  agree  with  him.  The  drawings  in  his 
little  portfolio  were  mostly  for  the  Morte  d' 
Arthur,  with  one  or  two  of  those,  now  cherished 
by  the  collector,  that  have  a  hint  of  the  Japanese 
under  whose  influence  he  momentarily  passed. 
J.  enjoys  the  reputation,  which  he  deserves,  of 
telling  the  truth  always,  no  matter  how  unpleas 
ant  to  those  to  whom  he  tells  it.  Truth  to  Beards- 
ley  was  pleasant  and  his  face  was  radiant  when 
he  left  us.  J.  has  also  the  courage  of  his  con 
victions,  and  all  he  said  to  Beardsley  he  repeated 
promptly  to  the  public  in  the  first  number  of 
The  Studio,  a  magazine  started  not  as  a  pulpit 
but  as  a  commercial  enterprise — started,  how 
ever,  at  the  right  moment  to  be  kindled  into  life 
178 


Photograph  by  Frederick  H.  Evans 

AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 


•  -•  •••;   -  •   ••  •'•  ,,; 

.        •          :       • 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

and  steered  toward  success  by  the  enthusiasm 
and  the  energy  of  the  Young  Men  of  the  Nineties. 
Beardsley  was  bound  to  become  known 
whether  articles  were  written  about  him  or  not. 
But  J.  's  was  the  first  and  made  recognition  come 
the  sooner.  The  heads  of  many  young  men  grow 
giddy  with  the  first  success ;  at  the  exultant  top 
of  the  winding  stair  that  leads  to  it,  they  no  longer 
see  those  who  gave  them  a  hand  when  they  bal 
anced  on  the  lowest  rung.  But  Beardsley  was 
not  made  that  way.  He  kept  his  head  cool,  his 
eyesight  clear.  He  never  forgot.  Gratitude 
coloured  the  friendship  with  us  that  followed, 
even  in  the  days  when  he  was  one  of  the  most 
talked  about  men  in  London.  He  knew  that 
always  by  his  work  alone  he  would  be  judged  at 
Buckingham  Street,  and  to  J.  he  brought  his 
drawings  and  his  books  for  criticism.  He 
brought  his  schemes  as  well,  just  as  he  brought 
the  youth  not  only  of  years  but  of  temperament 
to  our  Thursday  nights.  He  came  almost  as  regu 
larly  as  Henley  and  Henley's  Young  Men,  adding 
his  young  voice  to  the  uproar  of  discussion,  as 
full  of  life  as  if  he  too,  like  Harland,  grudged  a 
minute  of  the  years  he  knew  for  him  were 
counted.  In  no  other  house  where  it  was  my 
pleasure  to  meet  him  did  he  seem  to  me  to  show  to 

179 


NIGHTS 

such  advantage.  In  his  own  home  I  thought  him 
overburdened  by  the  scheme  of  decoration  he  had 
planned  for  it.  In  many  houses  to  which  he  was 
asked  he  was  amiable  enough  to  assume  the  pose 
expected  of  him.  The  lion-hunters  hoped  that 
Beardsley  would  be  like  his  drawings.  Strange, 
decadent,  morbid,  bizarre,  weird,  were  adjectives 
bestowed  upon  them,  and  he  played  up  to  the 
adjectives  for  the  edification  or  mystification  of 
the  people  who  invented  them  and  for  his  own 
infinite  amusement.  But  with  us  he  did  not  have 
to  play  up  to  anything  and  could  be  just  the 
simple,  natural  youth  he  was — as  simple  and 
natural  as  I  have  always  found  the  really  great, 
more  interested  in  his  work  than  most  young 
men,  and  keener  for  success. 

I  like  to  insist  upon  his  simplicity  because 
people  now,  who  judge  him  by  his  drawings, 
would  so  much  rather  insist  upon  his  perversity 
and  his  affectation.  How  can  you  reconcile  that 
sort  of  thing  with  simplicity?  They  will  ask, 
pointing  to  drawings  of  little  mocking  satyrs  and 
twisted  dwarfs  and  grotesques  and  extravagant 
forms  and  leering  faces  and  a  suggestion  of  one 
can  hardly  say  what.  But  it  might  as  well  be 
asked  why  the  mediaeval  artist  delighted  to  carve 
homely,  familiar  scenes  and  incidents,  and  worse, 

180 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

in  the  holiest  places,  to  lavish  his  ingenuity  upon 
the  demons  and  devils  above  the  doors  leading 
into  his  great  churches;  why  a  philosopher  like 
Rabelais  chose  to  express  the  wisest  thought  in 
the  most  indecent  fooling ;  why  every  genius  does 
not  look  out  upon  life  and  the  world  with  the 
same  eyes  and  find  the  same  method  to  record 
what  he  sees.  Some  men  can  only  marvel  with 
Louis  Stevenson  at  the  wide  contrast  between 
the  "prim  obliterated  polite  face  of  life"  and  its 
" orgiastic  foundations";  others  are  only  recon 
ciled  to  it  by  the  humour  in  the  contrast  or  by 
the  pity  invoked  by  its  victims.  What  makes 
the  genius  is  just  the  fact  that  he  looks  out  upon 
life,  that  he  feels,  that  he  uses  his  eyes,  in  his 
own  way ;  also,  that  he  invents  his  own  methods 
of  expression.  Beardsley  saw  the  satire  of  life,  he 
loved  the  grotesque  which  has  so  gone  out  of  date 
in  our  matter-of-fact  day  that  we  almost  forget 
what  it  means,  and  no  doubt  disease  gave  a 
morbid  twist  to  his  vision  and  imagination.  But, 
above  all,  he  was  young,  splendidly  young :  young 
when  he  began  work,  young  when  he  finished 
work.  He  had  the  curiosity  as  to  the  world  and 
everything  in  it  that  is  the  divine  right  of  youth, 
and  he  had  the  gaiety,  the  exuberance,  the  flam- 
boyancy,  the  fun  of  the  youth  destined  to  do  and 

181 


NIGHTS 

to  triumph.  Already,  in  his  later  work,  are  signs 
of  the  passing  of  the  first  youthful  stage  of  his 
art.  It  is  suggestive  to  contrast  the  conventional 
landscapes  with  the  grinning  little  monstrosities 
in  some  of  the  illustrations  for  the  Rape  of  the 
Lock;  the  few  drawings  for  his  Volpone  have  a 
dignity  he  had  not  hitherto  achieved. 

Nobody  can  be  surprised  if  some  of  the  gaiety 
and  exuberance  and  fun  got  no  less  into  his  man 
ner  towards  the  people  whose  habit  is  to  shield 
their  eyes  with  the  spectacles  of  convention. 
Beardsley  had  a  keen  sense  of  humour  that  helped 
him  to  snatch  all  the  joy  there  is  in  the  old,  time- 
honoured,  youthful  game  of  getting  on  the  nerves 
of  established  respectability.  Naturally,  so 
Robert  Ross,  his  friend,  has  said  of  him,  "he  pos 
sessed  what  is  called  an  artificial  manner ";  that 
is,  his  manner  was  called  affected,  as  was  his  art, 
because  it  wasn't  exactly  like  everybody  else's. 
I  have  never  yet  come  across  the  genius  whose 
manner  was  exactly  like  everybody  else's,  and 
shyness,  self-consciousness,  counted  for  some 
thing  in  his,  at  least  at  the  start.  He  had  only  to 
exaggerate  this  manner,  or  mannerism,  to  set 
London  talking.  It  was  the  easier  because  ru 
mours  quickly  began  to  go  about  of  the  darkened 
room  in  which  he  worked,  of  his  turning  night 
182 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

into  day  and  day  into  night  like  Huysmans's 
hero,  and  of  this  or  of  that  strange  habit  or  taste, 
until  people  began  to  see  all  sorts  of  things  in 
him  that  weren't  there,  just  as  they  read  all  sorts 
of  things  into  his  drawings  that  he  never  put  into 
them,  always  seeking  what  they  were  determined 
to  find.  To  many  there  was  uncanniness  in  the 
very  extent  of  his  knowledge,  in  his  wide  reading, 
in  his  mastery  of  more  than  one  art,  for,  if  he 
had  not  been  an  artist,  he  most  assuredly  would 
have  been  a  musician  or  a  writer.  Added  to  all 
this,  was  the  abnormal  notice  he  attracted  almost 
at  once,  the  diligence  with  which  he  was  imitated 
and  parodied  and  the  rapidity  with  which  a 
Beardsley  type  leaped  into  fashion. 

Of  course  Beardsley  enjoyed  it.  What  youth 
of  his  age  would  not  have  enjoyed  the  excitement 
of  such  a  success?  It  would  have  been  morbid 
at  his  age  not  to  enjoy  it.  He  never  seemed  to 
me  more  simply  himself  than  when  he  was  relat 
ing  his  adventures  and  laughing  at  them  with  all 
the  fresh,  gay  laughter  of  the  boy — the  wonderful 
boy — he  was.  Arthur  Symons  wrote  of  him,  I 
have  forgotten  where,  that  he  admired  himself 
enormously.  I  should  say  that  he  was  amused 
by  himself  enormously  and  was  quite  ready  to 
pose  and  to  bewilder  for  the  sake  of  the  amuse- 

183 


NIGHTS 

ment  it  brought  Mm.    He  was  never  spoiled  nor 
misled  by  either  his  fame  or  his  notoriety. 

It  was  so  Beardsley's  habit  to  consult  J.  that 
he  would  have  asked  advice,  if  Harland  had  not, 
for  The  Yellow  Book  which  went  through  several 
stages  of  its  preliminary  planning  in  the  old 
Buckingham  Street  chambers.  Among  the  vivid 
memories  of  our  Thursday  nights  one  is  of  Har 
land  taking  J.  apart  for  long,  intimate  discussions 
in  a  corner  of  the  studio,  and  another  of  Beards- 
ley  taking  him  off  for  confidences  as  intimate 
and  long,  and  my  impression  in  looking  back, 
though  I  may  be  mistaken,  is  that  each  had  his 
personal  little  scheme  for  a  journal  of  his  own 
before  he  decided  to  share  it  with  the  other.  It 
was  characteristic  of  the  friendliness  of  both  that 
they  should  have  insisted  upon  J.  figuring  in  the 
first  number.  As  vivid  in  my  memory  is  the 
warm  spring  morning  when  Beardsley,  his  face 
beaming  with  joy,  called  to  give  me  an  early  copy 
of  this  first  number,  with  a  little  inscription  from 
him  on  the  fly-leaf — I  have  just  taken  down  the 
volume  from  the  near  book  shelf — "To  Mrs. 
Pennell  from  Aubrey  Beardsley"  I  read,  as  com 
monplace  an  inscription  as  ever  artist  or  author 
wrote,  but,  reading  it,  I  see  as  if  it  were  yesterday 
the  sunlit  Buckingham  Street  room  where  I  used 
184 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

to  work,  William  Penn  curled  up  on  my  desk, 
and,  coming  in  the  door,  the  radiant  youth  with 
the  gay-covered  book  in  his  hands. 

And  there  followed  the  dinner — the  amazing 
dinner  as  unlike  the  usual  formal  dinner  of  in 
auguration  as  could  be.  It  was  given  in  an  upper 
room  of  the  Hotel  d'ltalie  in  Old  Compton  Street 
and  was  as  free  of  ceremony  as  our  Thursday 
nights.  The  men  were  in  dress  suits  or  tweeds 
as  they  chose,  the  women  in  evening  or  tailor 
gowns  according  to  their  convenience.  I  have  an 
impression  that  more  people  came  than  were  ex 
pected  and  that  it  was  all  the  waiters  could  do  to 
serve  them.  I  know  I  was  much  more  concerned 
with  my  discomfort  to  find  that  Harland  and 
Beardsley,  for  the  first  time  in  my  experience, 
had  forgotten  how  to  talk.  Everybody  else  was 
talking.  I  can  still  see  the  animated  faces  and 
hear  the  animated  voices  of  Mrs.  Harland  and 
John  Oliver  Hobbes  and  Menie  Muriel  Dowie  and 
Kenneth  Grahame  and  George  Moore  and  John 
Lane  and  Max  Beerbohm,  and  all  the  brand-new 
writers  prepared  to  shock,  or  to  " uplift,"  or  to 
pull  down  old  altars  and  set  up  new  ones,  or  any 
other  of  the  fine  things  that  were  to  make  the 
Yellow  Book  a  force  and  famous.  But  also  I  can 
still  feel  the  heavy,  unnatural  silence  of  the  two 

185 


NIGHTS 

editors  from  which  I  was  the  chief  sufferer,  to 
me  having  fallen  the  honour  of  sitting  in  the 
centre  of  the  high  table  between  them.  J.  was 
away  and,  in  his  absence,  I  was  distinguished  by 
this  mark  of  Beardsley's  appreciation  and  Har- 
land's  friendliness.  I  was  greatly  flattered,  but 
less  entertained.  They  were  both  as  nervous  as 
debutantes  at  a  first  party.  Shrinking  from  the 
shadow  cast  before  by  their  coming  speeches, 
neither  of  them  had  as  much  as  a  word  to  throw 
me.  Nor  could  they  concentrate  their  distracted 
thoughts  upon  the  menu — plate  after  plate  was 
taken  away  untouched,  while  I  kept  on  empty 
ing  mine  in  self-defence,  to  pass  the  time,  wonder 
ing  if,  in  my  role  of  the  Pall  Mall's  "  greedy  Au- 
tolycus,"  my  friends  would  now  convict  me  of 
the  sin  of  public  eating  as  well  as  what  they  had 
been  pleased  to  pretend  was  my  habit  of  "  pri 
vate  eating, "for  not  otherwise, they  would  assure 
me,  could  they  account  for  the  unfailing  flam- 
boyancy  of  my  weekly  article  on  cookery.  Seated 
between  the  two  men,  in  their  hours  of  ease  when 
they  were  not  editors,  my  trouble  would  have  been 
to  listen  to  both  at  the  same  moment  and  to  get  a 
word  in  edgewise.  However,  when  the  speeches 
were  over  the  strain  was  relaxed.  The  evening 
ended  in  the  accustomed  floods  of  talk ; — on  the 
186 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

way  from  the  Hotel  d 'Italic ;  at  the  Bodley  Head, 
John  Lane's  new  premises  in  the  Albany  to  which 
he  took  us  all  that  we  might  see  the  place  from 
which  the  Yellow  Book  was  to  be  published; 
round  a  little  table  with  a  red-and-white  checked 
cover  in  the  basement  of  the  Monico,  the  company 
now  reduced  to  Harland  and  Mrs.  Harland, 
Beardsley,  Max  Beerbohm  and  two  or  three 
others  whose  faces  have  grown  dim  in  my 
memory,  everybody  as  unwilling  to  break  up  the 
meeting  as  on  Thursday  nights  in  our  Bucking 
ham  Street  rooms.  And  with  these  ceremonies 
the  Yellow  Book  was  launched  into  life. 

I  am  not  sure  what  the  Yellow  Book  means 
to  others — to  those  others  who  buy  it  now  in  the 
thirteen  volumes  of  the  new  edition  and  prize  it 
as  a  strange  record  of  a  strange  period,  from 
which  they  feel  as  far  removed  as  we  felt  from 
the  Sixties.  But  to  me,  the  bright  yellow-bound 
volumes  mean  youth,  gay,  irresponsible,  credu 
lous,  hopeful  youth,  and  Thursday  night  at  Buck 
ingham  Street  in  full  swing.  To  be  sure  the 
Yellow  Book  was  never  so  young  as  it  was 
planned  to  be.  It  did  not  represent  only  les 
Jeunes,  who  would  have  kept  it  all  to  themselves 
in  their  first  mad,  exuberant,  reckless  spring 
time.  But  they  were  not  strong  enough  to  stand 

187 


NIGHTS 

alone,  as  les  Jeunes  seldom  are,  or  have  been 
through  the  ages.  It  was  more  original  in  its 
art  than  in  its  literature.  Some  of  the  youngest 
writers  were  " discoveries "  of  Henley's,  while 
some  who  actually  were  " discovered"  by  the  Yel 
low  Book  have  faded  out  of  sight.  Many  were 
men  of  name  and  fame  well  established.  Hamer- 
ton,  almost  at  the  end  of  his  career,  Henry  James 
in  the  full  splendour  of  his  maturity,  Edmund 
Gosse  with  his  reputation  already  assured,  were 
as  welcome  as  the  youngest  of  the  young  men  and 
women  who  had  never  printed  a  line  before.  So 
identified  with  "this  passage  of  literary  history" 
— in  his  words — was  Henry  James  that  he  has 
recorded  the  preliminary  visit  of  "a  young 
friend  [Harland  of  course],  a  Kensington  neigh 
bour  and  an  ardent  man  of  letters,"  with  "a 
young  friend  of  his  own,"  in  whom  there  is  no 
mistaking  Beardsley,  "to  bespeak  my  interest 
for  a  periodical  about  to  take  birth  in  his  hands, 
on  the  most  original ' lines'  and  with  the  happiest 
omen."  But  there  was  youth  in  this  readiness 
for  hero-worship — youth  in  this  tribute  to  the 
older  men  whose  years  could  not  dim  the 
brilliance  nor  lessen  the  power  of  their  work  in 
the  eyes  of  the  new  generation — the  fragrance  of 
youth  exudes  from  the  pages  of  the  Yellow  Book 
188 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

as  I  turn  them  over  again,  in  places  the  fragrance 
of  infancy,  the  young  contributors  so  young  as  to 
seem  scarcely  out  of  their  swaddling  clothes.  At 
the  time  the  energy  and  zest  put  into  it  had  an 
equal  savour  of  youth.  And  altogether  it  gave 
us  all  a  great  deal  to  talk  about,  so  that  I  see  in 
it  now  a  sort  of  link  to  join  on  Thursday  nights 
the  different  groups  from  their  opposing  corners, 
supplying  to  writers  and  artists  one  subject  of 
the  same  interest  to  both.  It  even  opened  the 
door  to  the  architects,  one  of  whom  went  so  far 
as  to  neglect  architecture  and  to  emulate  Ibsen 
in  a  play. 

The  last  thing  I  foresaw  for  the  Yellow  Book 
was  a  speedy  end  or,  for  the  matter  of  that,  any 
end  at  all,  so  overflowing  was  it  with  the  spirit 
of  youth  and  energy,  war  and  enthusiasm.  But 
the  end  came  surprisingly  soon.  To  remind  me, 
were  I  in  danger  of  forgetting,  another  book 
stands  on  our  shelves  close  to  the  First  Volume  of 
the  Yellow  Book: — the  First  Volume  of  the 
Savoy,  on  its  fly-leaf  again  Beardsley's  inscrip 
tion  simple  as  himself,  "Mrs.  Pennell,  with  kind 
est  regards  from  Aubrey  Beardsley,"  and  only 
a  little  less  than  two  years  between  the  dates  of 
the  two.  And  the  beginning  of  the  Savoy  meant 
the  end  of  the  Yellow  Book,  whose  life  was  short 

189 


NIGHTS 

after  Beardsley  left  it.  Why  lie  left  it  has  noth 
ing  to  do  with  the  story  of  our  Thursday  nights, 
when  no  obstacle,  great  or  small,  would  have  been 
put  in  its  way  by  us  who  held  youth  and  energy, 
war  and  enthusiasm  above  most  things  in  de 
mand  and  honour.  But  I  question  if  the  time  has 
come  for  the  full  telling  of  the  story,  wherever 
or  with  whom  the  blame  may  lie.  That  an  objec 
tion  was  raised  to  Beardsley's  presence  in  the 
Yellow  Book,  though  without  Beardsley  there 
would  have  been  no  Yellow  Book,  is  known  and 
has  been  told  in  print,  the  reason  being  that  Vic 
torian  sham  prudery  and  respectability  had  not 
been  totally  wiped  out  for  all  the  hard  fighting  of 
the  Fighting  Nineties.  Beardsley  was  not  slain, 
he  was  not  defeated,  at  once  he  reappeared  on  the 
battle-field  with  the  Savoy,  Arthur  Symons  his 
fellow  editor.  But  by  now  the  enemy  never  yet 
conquered  on  this  earth  held  him  in  deadly  grip, 
and  the  fight  he  had  to  fight  sent  him  from  Lon 
don  to  Bournemouth,  to  Saint-Germain,  to 
Dieppe,  to  Mentone  in  search  of  health.  He  was 
the  youngest  of  that  old  Thursday  night  crowd 
and  he  was  the  first  to  go,  and  the  Savoy  went 
with  him,  and  before  he  had  gone  our  Thursday 
nights  were  already  but  a  landmark  in  memory, 
so  quickly  does  the  flame  of  youth  burn  out. 
190 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

VII 

By  another  of  our  happy  chances  Phil  May 
came  as  assiduously  on  our  Thursday  nights  as 
Beardsley,  and  they  were  two  of  the  artists, 
though  their  art  was  as  the  poles  apart,  who  had 
most  influence  on  the  black-and-white  of  the 
Nineties — it  will  be  seen  from  this  that  I  refrain 
from  saying  what  I  think  of  J.  and  his  influence, 
but  it  is  considered  almost  as  indiscreet,  almost 
as  bad  form,  to  admit  the  excellence  or  impor 
tance  of  one's  husband's  work  as  to  pretend  to 
any  in  one's  own. 

If  no  drawings  could  have  been  less  like 
Beardsley's  than  Phil  May's  neither  could  two 
men  have  been  more  utterly  unlike.  Some 
friends  of  Beardsley's  believe  that  he  was  hap 
piest  where  there  was  most  noise,  most  people, 
most  show,  which,  however,  was  not  my  impres 
sion.  But  when  there  was  the  noise  of  people 
about  him,  he  might  be  relied  upon  to  contribute 
his  share  and  to  take  part  in  whatever  show  was 
going.  I  question  if  Phil  May  was  happy  at  all 
unless  in  the  midst  of  many  people  and  much 
noise,  whether  at  home  or  abroad,  but  to  their 
noise,  anyway,  he  had  not  the  least  desire  to  add. 
Beardsley  was  fond  of  talk,  always  had  something 
to  say,  was  always  eager  to  say  it.  All  Phil  May 

191 


NIGHTS 

asked  was  not  to  be  expected  to  say  anything,  to 
be  allowed  to  smile  amiably  Ms  dissent  or  ap 
proval.  Had  the  rest  of  our  company  been  of  Ms 
mind  in  the  matter,  it  would  not  have  been  so 
much  easier  for  us  to  start  the  talk  at  once  than 
to  stop  it  at  a  reasonable  hour,  our  Thursday 
nights  would  not  have  been  so  deafening  with 
talk  that  I  do  not  yet  understand  why  the  other 
tenants  in  the  house  did  not  unite  in  an  indignant 
protest  to  the  landlord. 

It  was  not  laziness  that  kept  him  silent.  He 
had  not  a  touch  of  laziness  in  his  composition. 
His  drawings  look  so  simple  that  people  thought 
they  were  dashed  off  at  odd  moments.  But  over 
them  he  took  the  infinite  pains  and  time  con 
sidered  by  the  wise  to  be  the  true  secret  of  genius. 
It  may  be  he  expressed  himself  so  well  in  lines 
he  had  no  use  for  words.  The  one  indisputable 
fact  is  that  he  would  do  anything  to  escape  talk 
ing.  I  recall  a  night — not  a  Thursday  night 
though  he  finished  it  in  our  rooms — when  he  had 
been  invited  to  lecture  to  a  Woman's  Club  at  the 
Society  of  Arts.  He  appeared  on  the  platform 
with  a  formidable-looking  MS.  in  his  hand,  but 
he  put  it  down  at  once  and  spent  his  appointed 
hour  in  making  drawings  on  big  sheets  of  paper 
arranged  for  an  occasional  illustration.  He  had 
192 


Drawing  by^Himself 


PHIL  MAY  IN  CAP  AND  BELLS 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

more  to  say  than  I  ever  heard  him  say  anywhere, 
when  we  got  back  to  Buckingham  Street.  The 
MS.  was  all  right,  he  assured  us,  a  capital  lect 
ure  written  for  him  by  a  friend,  but  it  began 
"Far  be  it  from  me'7  something  or  other,  he 
didn't  wait  to  see  what,  for,  as  far  as  he  got,  it 
did  not  sound  like  him,  did  it?  and  we  could 
honestly  agree  that  it  did  not. 

He  could  talk.  I  must  not  give  the  idea  that 
he  could  not.  I  know  some  of  his  friends  who  do 
not  share  or  accept  unqualified  my  memory  of 
him  as  a  silent  man.  But  he  talked  most  and 
best  when  he  had  but  a  single  companion,  and 
nothing  could  persuade  me  that  he  was  not 
always  relieved,  when  the  chance  came,  to  let 
others  do  the  talking  for  him. 

I  do  not  know  what  the  attraction  was  that 
made  everybody  like  him,  not  merely  the  riffraff 
and  the  loafers  who  hung  about  his  studio  and 
waylaid  him  in  the  street  for  what  they  could  get 
out  of  him,  but  all  sorts  of  people  who  asked  for 
nothing  save  his  company — I  could  never  define 
the  attraction  to  myself.  It  was  not  his  looks. 
Even  before  his  last  years,  when  he  was  the  image 
of  J.  J.  Shannon's  portrait  of  him,  his  appear 
ance  was  not  prepossessing.  He  dressed  well  ac 
cording  to  his  ideals.  Beardsley  was  not  more  of 
13  193 


NIGHTS 

a  dandy;  but  Beardsley  was  the  dandy  of  Pic 
cadilly  or  the  Boulevards,  PbU  May  was  the 
dandy  of  the  race-course.  He  brought  with  him 
that  inevitable,  indescribable  look  that  the  com 
panionship  of  horses  gives  and  that  in  those  days 
broke  out  largely  in  short,  wide-spreading  covert 
coats  and  big  pearl  buttons.  I  have  always  been 
grateful  to  the  man  who  enlivens  the  monotony 
of  dress  by  a  special  fashion  of  his  own,  provided 
it  belongs  to  him.  The  horsy  costume  did  belong 
to  May,  for  he  rode  and  hunted  and  was  a  good 
deal  with  horses,  but  it  was  borrowed  by  some  of 
his  admirers  until  it  degenerated  into  almost  as 
great  an  affectation  as  the  artist's  velvet  jacket 
and  long  hair,  or  the  high  stock  and  baggy  cor 
duroys  of  the  Latin  Quarter  imported  into 
Chelsea.  When  the  Beggarstaff  Brothers,  as 
Pryde  and  Nicholson  called  themselves  in  those 
old  days,  would  wander  casually  into  our  rooms 
at  the  end  of  six  or  eight  feet  of  poster  that  they 
had  brought  to  show  J.  and  that  needed  a  great 
deal  of  manipulation  to  bring  in  at  all,  they 
looked  as  if  the  stable,  not  the  studio,  was  their 
workshop.  And  one  young  genius  of  an  illus 
trator,  who  could  not  afford  to  ride,  and  who  I 
do  not  believe  had  ever  been  on  a  horse  in  his 
life,  could  not  mount  the  bus  in  his  near  suburb 
194 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

without  putting  on  riding  breeches.  But  PMl 
May's  dress  was  as  essentially  his  as  his  silence. 
Neither  his  looks  nor  his  silence,  however 
original  and  personal,  could  have  been  the  cause 
of  the  charm  he  undeniably  possessed.  I  think 
he  was  one  of  the  people  whom  one  feels  are  nice 
instinctively,  without  any  reason.  He  was 
sympathetic  and  responsive,  serious  when  the 
occasion  called  for  it,  foolish  when  folly  was  in 
order.  It  wasn't  only  in  his  drawings  that  he 
was  ready  to  wear  the  cap  and  bells.  I  know  an 
artist,  one  of  whose  cherished  memories  of  Phil 
May  is  of  the  Christmas  Eve  when  they  both  rang 
Lord  Leighton's  door-bell  and  ran  away  and  back 
to  Phil  May's  studio  on  the  other  side  of  the 
road,  and  Phil  May  was  as  pleased  as  if  it  had 
been  a  masterpiece  for  Punch.  He  was  natur 
ally  kind, — amiable  perhaps  because  it  was  the 
simplest  thing  to  be.  In  his  own  house  his 
amiability  forced  him  to  break  his  silence,  but 
his  remarks  then,  as  far  as  I  heard  them,  were 
usually  confined  to  the  monotonous  offer  "Have 
a  cigar!"  "Have  a  whiskey-and-soda!"  or 
"Have  a  drawing!"  if  anyone  happened  to  ex 
press  admiration  for  his  work.  Had  we  accepted 
this  last  offer  every  time  it  was  made  to  us,  we 
would  have  a  fine  collection  of  Phil  May's,  while, 

195 


NIGHTS 

as  it  is,  we  do  not  own  as  much  as  a  single  sketch 
given  to  us  by  him.  Visitors  who  did  not  share 
our  scruples  have  found  their  steady  attendance 
at  his  Sunday  nights  one  of  the  best  investments 
they  ever  made. 

Away  from  his  own  house,  on  our  Thursday 
nights,  relieved  of  the  necessity  to  offer  anything, 
this  being  now  our  business,  his  conversation  was 
more  limited  than  in  his  own  place.  My  memory 
of  him  is  of  an  ugly,  delightful,  smiling,  silent 
man,  sitting  astride  a  chair,  his  arms  resting  on 
the  back,  a  big  cigar  in  his  mouth,  and  around 
him  a  band  of  devoted  admirers  as  fully  prepared 
and  equipped  to  do  the  talking  for  him  as  he  was 
to  let  them  do  it.  He  held  his  court  as  royally 
among  illustrators  as  Henley  among  his  Young 
Men,  and  if  nobody  contributed  so  little  to  the 
talk  as  Phil  May,  around  nobody  else,  except 
Henley,  did  so  much  of  the  talk  centre. 

In  my  recollections  of  Phil  May  astride  his 
chair  on  Thursday  nights,  Hartrick  and  Sullivan 
are  never  very  long  absent.  Nobody  knew  better 
than  they  the  beauty  of  his  work — to  hear  them 
talk  about  his  line  was  to  be  convinced  that  the 
supreme  interest  in  life  was  the  expressive 
quality  of  a  line  made  with  pen  in  black  ink  on  a 
piece  of  white  paper.  The  appearance  of  The 
196 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

Parson  and  the  Painter  was  one  of  the  events  of 
the  Nineties — though  it  was  not  boomed  into 
notoriety  as  were  the  performances  of  some  other 
illustrators  of  the  period  as  ingenious  as  Barnum 
in  the  art  of  advertisement — and  there  was  not 
an  artist  who  did  not  hail  May  as  a  master.  But 
Hartrick  and  Sullivan  went  further.  They  were 
not  only  such  good  artists  themselves  that  they 
could  appreciate  genius  in  others,  they  were 
young  enough  not  to  be  afraid  of  their  enthusi 
asms.  They  gave  the  effect  of  being  with  May, 
with  whom  they  often  arrived  and  stayed  until 
the  deplorably  early  hour  of  the  morning  at  which 
he  started  for  home,  in  order  that  they  might 
watch  over  him,  and,  indeed,  he  needed  watching. 
He  was  not  readier  in  offering  than  in  giving 
anything  he  was  asked  for,  which  was  one  reason 
why  there  was  always  a  procession  of  waiters  and 
actors  and  jockeys  out  of  work  at  his  front  door — 
why  his  pockets  were  always  empty.  They  even 
discovered  the  same  genius  in  May's  talk  as  in 
his  drawing,  though  the  mystery  was  when  they 
heard  the  talk.  To  this  day  they  will  quote  Phil 
May  while  I  wonder  how  it  is  that  while  for  me 
Henley's  talk  has  not  lost  its  thunder,  nor  Bob 
Stevenson's  its  brilliant  flashes  of  imbecility,  nor 
Harland's  its  whimsical  twist,  nor  Beardsley's 

197 


NIGHTS 

its  fresh  gaiety,  nothing  of  Phil  May's  remains 
save  the  familiar  refrain ' '  Have  a  cigar I "  "  Have 
a  whiskey-and-soda ! ' '  "  Have  a  drawing ! ' ' 

Obsessed  by  my  old-fashioned  notion  as  host 
ess  that  people  could  not  enjoy  themselves  un 
less  they  were  kept  moving,  persisting  in  my  vain 
efforts  to  break  up  the  groups  into  which  the  com 
pany  invariably  fell,  again  and  again  I  would 
lure  Hartrick  and  Sullivan  away  from  Phil  May. 
But  it  was  no  use.  What  they  all  wanted  was  to 
talk  not  only  about  their  shop  but  their  own  par 
ticular  counter  in  it,  and  no  sooner  was  my  back 
turned  than  there  they  were  in  the  same  groups 
again,  Hartrick  and  Sullivan  watching  over  Phil 
May,  supported  by  Raven  Hill  and  Edgar  Wil 
son,  both  then  deeply  involved  in  youth's  game 
of  shocking  the  bourgeois  by  showing  on  the 
pages  of  Pick-Me-Up  how  the  matter  of  illustra 
tion  was  ordered  in  France,  and  presently  start 
ing  a  magazine  of  their  own  to  show  it  the  better, 
and  to  do  their  share  as  ardent  rebels  in  the  big 
fight  of  the  Nineties.  On  my  shelves,  close  by  the 
first  number  of  The  Yellow  Booh  and  of  the 
Savoy  is  the  first  volume  of  The  Butterfly  and  on 
its  fly-leaf  is  the  inscription:  "To  Elizabeth 
Robins  Pennell  with  L.  Raven  Hill's  kind  re 
gards,"  no  more  startlingly  original  than  Btards- 
198 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

ley's  inscriptions,  but  to  me  full  of  meaning  and 
memories.  I  cannot  look  at  it  without  seeing 
myself  fluttering  from  one  to  another  of  the  old 
Buckingham  Street  rooms,  heavy  with  the  smell 
of  smoke  and  powder,  thunderous  not  only  with 
the  knocking — naturally  I  quote  the  Ibsen  phrase 
everybody  was  quoting  in  the  Nineties — but  the 
banging,  the  battering,  the  bombarding  of  the 
younger  generation  at  the  Victorian  door  against 
which  it  was  desperate  work  to  make  any  im 
pression  at  all. 

VIII 

In  my  less  responsible  intervals  it  amused  me 
to  find  the  painters  running  their  own  shop,  or 
their  own  little  counter,  quite  apart  from  the 
illustrators,  and  carrying  on  all  by  themselves 
their  own  special  campaign  against  that  obdu 
rate  Victorian  door.  Their  campaign,  as  they  ran 
it,  required  less  talk  than  most,  for  they  were 
chiefly  men  of  the  New  English  Art  Club — the 
men  who  gave  the  shows  where  Felix  Buhot  smelt 
the  powder — the  men  who  were  considered 
apostles  of  defiance  when  the  inner  group  held 
their  once-famous  exhibition  as  "  London  Im 
pressionists  " — the  men  about  whom  the  critics 
for  a  while  did  nothing  save  talk — but  men  who 
had  the  reputation  of  talking  so  little  themselves 

199 


NIGHTS 

that,  when  a  man  came  up  for  election  in  their 
Club,  his  talent  for  silence  was  said  to  be  as  im 
portant  a  consideration  with  them  as  his  talent 
for  art.  Not  that  the  silence  of  any  one  of  them 
could  rival  Phil  May's  in  eloquence — they  never 
learned  to  say  nothing  with  his  charm.  Often  the 
poverty  of  their  conversation  had  the  effect  of 
being  involuntary,  as  if  they  might  have  had 
plenty  to  say  had  they  known  how  to  say  it.  More 
than  one  struggled  to  rid  himself  of  his  talent 
with  at  least  an  air  of  success. 

The  big  booming  voice  of  Charles  W.  Furse 
was  frequently  heard,  but  in  it  a  suspicion  of  an 
Academic  note  unfamiliar  in  our  midst,  so  that, 
young  as  he  was,  combative,  enthusiastic,  "a  good 
fellow"  as  they  say  in  England,  still  in  his 
Whistler  and  rebel  period,  his  friends  predicted 
for  him  the  Presidency  of  the  Royal  Academy. 
The  first  time  I  ever  saw  him  was  the  year  he 
was  showing  at  the  New  English  two  large  up 
right,  full-length  portraits  of  women,  highly 
reminiscent  of  Whistler,  and,  on  press  day,  was 
being  turned  out  of  the  gallery  by  the  critics  who, 
in  revolutionizing  criticism,  were  fighting  against 
the  old-fashioned  Victorian  idea  of  press  views 
with  the  artists  busy  log-rolling  and  an  elaborate 
lunch,  or  at  least  whiskey  and  cigars  behind  a 
200 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

screen.  The  New  English  men  compromised  by 
staying  away,  but  they  clung  to  the  lunch,  a  feast 
chiefly  for  their  commissionaire  and  their  sales 
man  and  the  grey-haired  critic,  a  survival,  who 
could  not  reconcile  himself  to  change  and  whom 
I  heard  once,  in  another  gallery,  pronounce  the 
show  admirable,  "  perfect  really,  your  show,  but 
for  one  thing  missing — a  decanter  and  cigars  on 
the  table. ' '  Purse,  who  had  not  heard  the  critic 's 
cry  for  reform  and  could  not  understand  his 
banishment,  lingered  in  the  passage,  button 
holing  everybody  who  came  out,  trying  to  pick 
up  a  hint  as  to  what  we  were  all  going  to  say 
about  him.  He  considered  himself  a  red-hot  rebel 
and  the  prophetic  picture  of  him  scaling  Aca 
demic  heights  annoyed  him  extremely,  though  he 
so  soon  became  an  Associate  of  the  Academy  that 
I  think,  had  he  lived,  time  would  have  proved 
the  prophets  right. 

Walter  Sickert's  voice,  too,  was  frequently 
heard  at  the  beginning  of  a  Thursday  night,  but 
his  promise  of  brilliancy  never  struck  me  as  lead 
ing  anywhere  in  particular,  my  personal  im 
pression  being  that  with  his  talk,  as  with  his  art, 
the  fulfilment  scarcely  justified  the  promise. 

D.  S.  MacColl,  young  arch-rebel  at  the  time 
little  as  the  formal  official  of  to-day  suggests  it, 

201 


NIGHTS 

his  bombarding  of  the  Victorian  door  directed 
chiefly  from  the  sober  columns  of  the  Spectator, 
and  later  of  the  Saturday  Review,  was  always 
well  armed  with  words  for  the  Thursday  night 
battle,  conscientious  in  distributing  his  blows  and 
shaping  them  in  strict  deference  to  his  sense  of 
style,  just  a  touch  of  the  preacher  perhaps  in  his 
voice  and  in  his  fight  for  art  and  freedom,  as  he 
was  the  first  to  acknowledge ;  more  than  once  I 
have  heard  him  explain  apologetically  that  his 
right  place  was  the  pulpit  for  which  he  had  been 
designed. 

Arthur  Tomson,  one  of  the  best  friends  in  the 
world,  was  a  spirited  revolutionary  who  went  to 
the  length  of  founding  and  editing  a  paper  of  his 
own  to  promote  revolution — the  Art  Weekly, 
which,  not  being  able  to  afford  illustrations,  con 
ducted  its  warfare  solely  by  its  articles,  and 
strong,  fearless,  knock-you-down  articles  they 
were  since  we  all  wrote  for  the  paper  while  it 
lasted.  It  did  not  last  long,  however,  but  shared 
the  fate  of  most  revolutionary  sheets  with  more 
brains  than  capital.  Arthur  Tomson  himself,  out 
of  print,  was  a  quiet,  if  staunch  fighter,  another 
of  the  old  Thursday  night  group  who  knew  that 
his  years  on  this  earth  were  to  be  short.  He  was 
not  the  gayer  for  it  as  Harland  and  Beardsley 
202 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

were,  but  the  sadder,  it  may  be  because  lie  fore 
saw  the  end  long  before  it  came,  and  he  was  given 
to  the  melancholy  that  found  expression  in  so 
many  of  his  paintings. 

Wilson  Steer,  Tonks,  Professor  Brown 
passed,  and  no  more,  across  the  stage  of  our 
Thursday  nights,  all  three,  as  I  remember  them, 
scrupulous  in  upholding  the  reputation  for  si 
lence  of  their  Club.  Conder  flitted  in  and  out 
of  our  rooms,  always  agreeable  but  not  the  man 
to  lift  up  his  voice  in  a  crowd. 

Occasionally,  a  visitor  from  abroad  appeared 
— Felix  Buhot  every  Thursday  that  one  winter, 
or,  more  rarely  Paul  Renouard,  in  London  for  the 
Graphic,  his  appearance  an  event  for  the  illus 
trators  who  already  reverenced  him  as  a  veteran. 
Or  else  it  was  a  representative,  a  publisher,  of 
les  Jeunes  over  there,  bringing  fresh  stimulus, 
fresh  incentive,  especially  if  his  coming  meant 
fresh  orders  and  fresh  opportunity  to  say  what 
had  to  be  said  freely  and  without  restraint.  Once 
it  was  Jules  Roque  from  Paris,  of  the  Courrier 
Frangais  in  which  he  published  the  drawings  of 
Louis  Legrand  and  Porain  and  other  artists 
accepted  as  models  by  the  young  men  of  our 
Thursday  nights  who  believed  in  themselves  the 
more  defiantly  when  asked  to  figure  in  such  good 

203 


NIGHTS 

company.  Once  it  was  Meier  Graef e  from  Berlin, 
big,  handsome,  enterprising,  not  yet  encumbered 
with  Post-Impressionism  and  its  outshoots,  seek 
ing  American  and  British  contributors  to  the 
German  Pan,  a  magazine  as  big  and  enterprising 
as  himself  if  not  always  as  handsome,  and  the 
younger  generation  of  London  had  the  comfort 
of  knowing  that  if  the  Victorian  door  in  England 
held  firm,  the  door  of  Europe  had  opened  to  them. 
Occasionally  one  of  the  older,  the  very  much 
older  generation  came  in  to  make  us  feel  the 
younger  for  his  presence — none  more  imposing 
than  Sandys,  most  distinguished  in  his  old  age, 
wearing  the  white  waistcoat  that  was  the  life 
long  symbol  of  his  dandyism,  full  of  Pre- 
Raphaelite  reminiscences,  and  reminiscences  of 
the  Italian  Primitives  could  not  have  seemed 
more  remote.  J.  sometimes  met  Holman  Hunt 
in  other  haunts — at  dinners  of  the  Society  of 
Illustrators  and  elsewhere — and  reported  him  to 
me  as  a  talker  who  could,  in  the  quantity  and 
aggressiveness  of  his  talk,  have  given  points  to 
Henley  and  Henley's  Young  Men,  so  I  regret  that 
he  never  was  with  us  to  talk  over  Pre-Raphaelite 
days  with  Sandys.  The  only  other  possible  repre 
sentative  of  Pre-Raphaelitism  who  came  was 
Walter  Crane,  if  so  he  can  be  called,  for  the  tra- 
204 


NIGHTS:   IN"  LONDON 

dition  fell  lightly  on  Ms  shoulders,  was  a  mere 
re-echo  in  his  work ;  the  only  one  of  Sandys  ?s  con 
temporaries  was  Whistler,  and  their  meeting  of 
which  J.  and  I  have  written  in  another  place, 
does  not  belong  to  the  story  of  our  Thursday 
nights,  for  they  were  a  thing  of  the  past  when 
Whistler  returned  from  Paris,  where  he  had  gone 
to  live  almost  as  they  began. 

Nor  did  Sandys  often  appear  on  Thursdays. 
He  seemed  to  prefer  the  evenings  when  we  were 
alone,  to  my  surprise,  for  the  homage  he  received 
when  he  did  come  on  Thursday  must  have  been 
pleasant.  Drawings  of  his  hung  prominently  in 
our  rooms,  J.  then  haunting  the  salesrooms  for 
the  originals  of  the  Sixties  as  industriously  as 
the  barrows  and  shops  for  their  reproductions. 
And  to  the  man  who  prefers  fame  to  reach  him 
during  his  lifetime,  surely  it  should  have  been 
an  agreeable  experience  to  sit,  or  to  be  enthroned 
as  it  were,  in  so  friendly  an  atmosphere,  with 
some  of  his  own  finest  work  on  the  wall  behind 
him  for  background,  and  surrounded  by  a  wor 
shipping  group  asking  nothing  better  than  to  be 
allowed  to  sit  at  his  feet  and  listen  to  his  every 
word — which  was  a  sacrifice  for  his  worshippers 
in  Buckingham  Street  who  rejoiced  in  the  sound 
of  their  own  voices  as  did  most  of  the  company. 

205 


NIGHTS 

But  the  Nineties  are  not  more  wonderful  and 
stimulating  to  the  young  men  of  to-day  who  look 
back  to  them  so  admiringly,  than  the  Sixties  were 
to  us  whom  they  kept  up  into  the  small  hours  of 
many  a  Friday  morning,  inexhaustible  as  a  sub 
ject  of  our  talk,  and  Sandys,  standing  for  the 
Sixties  and  all  we  found  in  them  so  admirable, 
could  command  any  sacrifice.  The  respect  for 
the  Sixties  was  an  article  of  faith,  a  dogma  of 
dogmas  in  the  Nineties.  If  the  now  younger  gen 
eration  write  articles  and  books  about  the  Nine 
ties — those  amazing  documents  in  which  I 
scarcely  recognise  an  age  I  thought  I  knew  by 
heart — we  were  still  more  zealous  in  writing 
books  about  the  Sixties.  And  we  collected  the 
drawings  and  publications  of  the  Sixties.  When 
J.  and  I  now  allowed  ourselves  an  afternoon  out, 
it  was  to  wander  from  Holywell  Street  to  Mile 
End  Road,  from  Piccadilly  to  Holborn,  searching 
the  booksellers'  barrows  and  shops  for  the  un 
sightly,  gaudy,  badly-bound  volumes  that  con 
tained  the  illustrations  of  the  Sixties — illustra 
tions  ranked  amongst  the  finest  ever  made.  Our 
book-shelves  that  are  still  filled  with  them  repre 
sent  one  of  the  most  animated  phases  of  the 
Nineties.  And  we  looked  upon  the  "men  of  the 
206 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

Sixties"  as  masters,  among  them  giving  to 
Sandys  a  leading  place. 

If  tie  was  not  any  longer  doing  the  work  for 
which  we  took  off  our  hat  to  him,  he  certainly 
looked  the  leader — tall,  handsome,  dignified,  just 
enough  of  a  stoop  in  his  shoulders  to  become  his 
age,  his  dress  irreproachable,  the  white  waist 
coat  immaculate,  pale  yellow  hair  parted  in  the 
middle  and  beautifully  brushed,  beard  not  patri 
archal  exactly  but  eminently  correct  and  well 
cared  for,  manners  princely.  It  was  clear  that 
he  liked  the  role  of  master  and  his  voice  was  in 
keeping  with  the  part.  But  he  was  a  master 
who  presided  at  his  best  over  a  small  audience, 
and,  no  doubt  knowing  it,  he  avoided  our 
Thursdays. 

He  was  also  a  master  given  to  small  gossip. 
We  heard  from  him  less  of  art,  its  aims  and 
ideals,  its  mediums  and  methods,  than  of  the  say 
ings  and  doings  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites  who  were 
his  friends  and  contemporaries.  The  name  of 
"Gabriel"  was  ever  in  his  mouth.  It  was  Ros- 
setti  whom  he  most  loved — or  love  is  not  the 
word,  less  of  affection  revealed  in  his  memories 
than  a  sense  of  injury,  as  if  it  had  somehow  been 
the  fault  of  "Gabriel"  and  the  others  that  he  had 
not  come  off  as  well  as  they,  though  of  all  "Ga- 

207 


NIGHTS 

briel"  had  been  most  active  in  seeing  him  through 
the  tight  places  he  so  successfully  got  himself  into. 
This,  no  doubt,  was  the  reason  Rossetti  felt  en 
titled  to  a  little  laugh  now  and  then  over  Sandys 's 
difficulties.  Sandys  was  a  man  who  needed  to 
be  seen  through  tight  places  until  the  end,  as  we 
had  occasion  to  know  by  the  urgent  note  he  sent  us 
on  a  Saturday  night,  more  than  once,  from  the 
Cafe  Royal,  his  favourite  haunt  in  his  later  years, 
where  a  variety  of  unavoidable  accidents,  with  a 
curious  faculty  for  repeating  themselves,  would 
keep  him  prisoner  until  his  friends  came  to  his 
relief. 

He  was  full  of  anecdote,  which  was  quite  in 
the  order  of  things,  the  Sixties  having  supplied 
anecdote  for  a  whole  library  of  books  and  maga 
zines.  Could  I  tell  Sandys 's  stories  with  Sandys 's 
voice  I  should  be  tempted  to  repeat  them  yet  once 
again,  though  many  were  told  us  also  by  Whistler, 
and  these  J.  and  I  have  recorded  in  the  Life. 
Whistler  told  them  better,  with  more  truth  be 
cause  with  more  gaiety  and  joy  in  their  absurdity. 
And  yet,  the  solemnity  of  Sandys  added  a  per 
sonal  flavour,  gave  them  a  character  nobody  else 
could  give.  I  have  not  forgotten  how  he  turned 
into  a  parable  the  tale  of  the  cross-eyed  maid  in 
the  Morris  Shop  in  Red  Lion  Square,  whose  eyes 
208 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

were  knocked  straight  by  a  shock  the  company 
of  Morris,  Marshall,  and  Faulkner  administered 
deliberately,  and  then  were  knocked  crooked 
again  by  a  shock  they  had  not  provided  for  or 
against.  And,  as  Sandys  recalled  them,  the 
strange  beasts  in  " Gabriel's"  house  and  garden 
might  have  been  let  loose  from  out  of  the 
Apocalypse.  But  Sandys 's  voice  has  been  stilled 
forever  and  the  anecdotes  have  been  published 
oftener,  I  do  believe,  than  any  others  in  the 
world's  rich  store  of  cliches.  The  great  of  his 
day  had  all  the  Boswells  they  wanted — a  retinue 
of  admirers  and  cuffs  ready — at  their  head 
William  Michael  Rossetti  to  pour  out  book  after 
book  about  his  brother,  to  leave  little  untold  about 
the  group  that  revolved  round  " Gabriel."  Even 
the  third  generation,  with  Ford  Madox  Hueffer 
to  lead,  has  taken  up  the  task.  The  anecdotes 
have  grown  familiar,  but  it  is  something  to  have 
heard  them  from  the  men  who  were  their  heroes. 

IX 

Well — our  Thursdays  were  pleasant,  an  in 
spiration  while  they  lasted,  and  for  a  time  I 
thought  they  must  last  as  long  as  we  did.  But 
nothing  pleasant  endures  forever,  the  bravest  in 
spiration  flickers  and  dies  almost  before  we 
14  209 


NIGHTS 

realize  its  flaring.  The  stern  duty  of  Friday 
morning  always  haunted  me  in  anticipation,  for 
I  have  never  been  able  to  take  lightly  the  work  I 
do  with  so  much  difficulty,  and  Friday  morning 
itself  often  brought  even  J.  up  with  a  sharp  turn 
to  face  the  fact  that  man  was  born  into  the  world 
to  labour  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  and  not  simply 
to  talk  all  night  until  no  work  was  left  in  him. 

That  may  have  been  one  reason  for  our  giv 
ing  up  so  agreeable  a  custom.  Another  perhaps 
came  from  the  discovery  that  the  freedom  of 
our  Thursday  nights  was  sometimes  abused.  A 
certain  type  of  Englishman  would  travel  a  mile 
and  more  for  anything  he  did  not  have  to  pay 
for,  even  if  it  was  for  nothing  more  substantial 
than  a  cigarette,  a  sandwich,  a  whiskey-and-soda. 
There  were  evenings  when,  looking  round  the 
packed  dining-room,  it  would  occur  to  me  that 
I  did  not  recognise  half  the  people  in  it.  Friends 
introduced  friends  and  they  introduced  other 
friends  until,  in  bewilderment,  I  asked  myself  if 
our  Thursday  night  was  ours  or  somebody  else's. 
And  I  fancied  a  tendency  to  treat  it  as  if  it  were 
somebody  else's, — to  take  an  ell  when  we  meant 
to  give  no  more  than  an  inch,  and  J.  was  as  little 
inclined  as  I  to  furnish  a  new  proof  of  the  wise 
old  proverb.  One  day  a  would-be  wit  who  was 
210 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

regular  in  his  attendance  and  his  talk,  and  who 
should  have  known  better,  asked  J.,  "Are  you 
still  running  your  Thursday  Club?"  and  so 
helped  to  precipitate  the  end.  We  were  not  run 
ning  a  Club  for  anybody,  and  if  the  fame  of  our 
Thursday  night  filled  our  rooms  with  people  who 
behaved  as  if  we  were,  the  sooner  we  got  rid  of 
them  the  better. 

Besides,  as  the  weeks  and  the  months  and  the 
years  went  on,  many  who  had  come  and  talked 
and  fought  our  Thursday  night  through  ceased 
to  come  altogether.  Where  I  failed  in  breaking 
up  the  groups  Time,  with  its  cruel  thoroughness, 
succeeded  and  began  to  scatter  them  far  and  wide. 
Death  stilled  voices  that  had  been  loudest.  The 
National  Observer  passed  out  of  Henley's  hands 
and  Henley  himself  into  the  Valley  of  the 
Shadow.  Bob  Stevenson  said  his  last  good-night 
to  us.  Beardsley,  Harland,  Arthur  Tomson, 
George  Steevens,  Phil  May,  Furse,  Iwan-Miiller 
— one  after  another  of  our  old  friends,  one  after 
another  of  those  old  masters  of  talk  set  out  on 
the  journey  into  the  Great  Silence.  It  is  hard 
to  believe  they  have  gone.  I  remember  how,  when 
they  were  with  us  and  the  talk  was  at  its  mad 
dest  and  somebody  would  suddenly  take  breath 
long  enough  to  look  out  of  our  windows,  whose 

211 


NIGHTS 

curtains  were  never  drawn  upon  the  one  spec 
tacle  we  could  offer — the  river  with  the  boats 
trailing  their  lights  down  its  shadowy  reaches, 
and  the  Embankment  with  the  lights  of  the  han 
soms  flying  to  and  fro,  and  the  bridges  with  the 
procession  of  lights  from  the  omnibuses  and  cabs 
and  the  trails  of  burning  cloud  from  the  trains — 
Henley  would  say,  "How  it  lives,  how  it  throbs 
with  life  out  there!"  and  I  would  think  to  my 
self,  ' 6  And  how  it  lives,  how  it  throbs  with  life  in 
here !" — with  a  life  too  intense,  it  seemed,  ever  to 
wear  itself  out.  And  yet  now  only  two  or  three 
of  the  old  friends  of  the  old  Thursday  nights  are 
left  to  look  down  with  us  upon  the  river  where  it 
flows  below  our  windows — upon  the  moving  lights 
of  London's  great  traffic,  upon  London's  great 
life  and  great  beauty,  and  great  movement  with 
out  end. 

It  is  not  only  the  dead  we  have  lost.  Time  has 
made  other  changes  as  sad  as  any  wrought  by 
Death.  The  young  have  grown  old, — have  thrown 
off  youth's  "proud  livery"  for  the  sombre  gar 
ment  of  age.  The  years  have  turned  the  rebel 
of  yesterday  into  the  Royal  Academician  of  to 
day.  The  inspired  young  prophet  who  protested 
week  by  week  against  mediocrity  in  paint,  settled 
down  to  keeping  the  mediocre  paintings  against 
212 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

which  his  protests  were  loudest.  He  who  thun 
dered  against  the  degeneracy  of  journalism  ac 
cepted  the  patronage  of  the  titled  promoter  of 
the  half -penny  press.  Architects  carried  their 
respectability  to  the  professional  chair  it  adorns, 
and  illustrators  rested  in  the  comfortable  berths 
provided  by  Punch.  Friendships  cooled,  and 
friends  who  never  missed  a  Thursday  look  the 
other  way  when  they  meet  us  in  the  street. 

Close  to  me,  as  I  write,  is  a  bookcase  on  whose 
shelves  Henley  and  Henley's  Young  Men — Mar 
riott  "Watson,  George  Steevens,  Charles  Whib- 
ley,  Leonard  Whibley,  Rudyard  Kipling,  Ken 
neth  Grahame,  Arthur  Morrison,  G.  S.  Street — 
jostle  each  other  in  the  big  and  little  volumes 
that  were  to  create  the  world  anew.  The  small 
green-bound  Henleys  stand  in  a  row.  Salome, 
The  Rape  of  the  Lock,  Volpone,  with  Beardsley 's 
illustrations,  are  flanked  by  the  more  pretentious 
performances  of  the  Kelmscott  Press  and  the 
Vale  Press  and  the  other  Presses  aspiring  with 
much  advertisement  to  do  what  the  Constables 
of  Edinburgh  did  so  much  better  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and,  as  a  reminder  of  this  truth,  the 
Montaigne  of  the  Tudor  Series  is  there  and  the 
Apuleius  and  the  Heliodorus,  each  with  its  in 
scription.  And  the  little  slim  volume,  neatly 

213 


NIGHTS 

bound  by  Zaehnsdorf,  called  Allahakbarries — 
now  a  prize  for  the  collector  I  am  told — immor 
talizes  one  recreation  at  least  of  Henley's  Young 
Men.  For  it  is  Barrie  's  report  of  the  Cricket  Team 
largely  made  up  of  these  Young  Men,  of  whom 
he  was  Captain  and  who  used  to  play  at  Shere 
on  the  never-to-be-forgotten  summer  days  when 
beautiful  Graham  Tomson  and  I  were  graciously 
invited  as  Patronesses,  and  little  Madge  Henley — 
her  death  shortly  afterwards  proving  Henley's 
own  death  blow — figured  as  "  Captain's  Girl" 
and  the  National  Observer  office  as  "  Practice 
Ground."  And  if  Henley  did  not  drag  himself 
down  with  us  to  the  pretty  Surrey  village,  he 
seemed  to  preside  over  us  all,  so  much  so  that 
when  J.  and  I  had  the  little  book  bound  and 
added  the  photographs  Harold  Frederic — "  Pho 
tographer"  in  the  report — made  of  the  Team,  we 
included  one  of  Henley,  and  altogether  the  tiny 
volume  is  as  eloquent  a  document  of  the  Nine 
ties  and  of  Henley  and  Henley's  Young  Men  as 
we  have,  and  I  wonder  what  the  collector  of 
those  snares  for  the  American  now  catalogued 
by  the  bookseller  as  "  Association  Books"  would 
not  give  to  own  it.  And  close  by  our  Allahak- 
~barries,  Henry  Harland's  Mademoiselle  Miss 
meets  in  the  old  friendly  companionship  Stee- 
214 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

vens's  Land  of  the  Dollar  and  Graham  Tomson's 
Poems  and  Bob  Stevenson's  Velasquez  and 
Harold  Frederic's  Return  of  the  O'Mahoney  and 
Bernard  Shaw's  Cashel  Byron's  Profession  in 
its  rare  paper  cover,  and  George  Moore's  Strike 
at  Arlingford,  and  Marriott  Watson's  Diogenes  of 
London,  and — but  of  what  use  to  go  through  the 
list,  the  long  catalogue,  to  the  end?  Ghosts  greet 
me  from  those  shelves,  ghosts  from  the  old  Thurs 
days,  from  the  radiant  days  when  youth  was 
merging  into  middle  age — surely  the  best  period 
in  one's  existence — days  into  which  the  breath  of 
life  never  can  be  breathed  again.  We  could  not 
revive  the  old  nights  if  we  would.  I  suppose 
nobody  now  reads  Zola,  but  we  read  him  in  the 
Nineties  and  I  have  always  been  haunted  by  his 
description  in  L'Oeuvre  of  the  last  reunion  of 
the  friends  who,  in  their  eager  youth,  had  meant 
to  conquer  Paris  and  who  used  to  meet  to  plan 
their  campaign  over  a  dinner  as  meagre  as  their 
income  and  gay  as  their  hopes.  But  when,  after 
years  during  which  money  and  fame  had  been 
heaped  up  by  more  than  one  and  disappointment 
and  despair  lavished  in  equal  measure  upon 
others,  they  ventured  to  dine  together  again,  and 
the  dinner  was  good  and  well  served  as  it  never 
had  been  of  old,  it  turned  to  dust  and  ashes  in 

215 


NIGHTS 

their  mouths — a  funeral  feast.  Dust  and  ashes 
would  be  our  fare  were  we  so  foolish  as  again  to 
open  our  doors  on  the  Thursday  night  conse 
crated  to  youth  and  its  battles  long  ago. 


If  we  have  had  no  more  Thursday  nights,  it 
does  not  follow  that  we  have  had  no  other  nights. 
The  habit  of  years  is  not  so  easily  broken,  and 
our  habit  was,  and  is,  at  night  to  gather  people 
about  us  and  to  talk.  Only,  after  the  Nineties, 
or  rather  before  the  end  of  the  Nineties,  we  never 
settled  again  with  weekly  regularity  upon  one 
special  night  out  of  the  seven  for  the  purpose — 
on  the  contrary,  we  took,  and  we  now  take,  our 
nights  as  they  came  and  come. 

They  have  not  been,  for  that,  the  less  inter 
esting  and  amusing,  not  less  loud  with  the  sound 
of  battle,  not  less  fragrant  with  the  smell  of 
smoke.  It  was  just  after  our  Thursday  nights, 
for  instance,  that  we  began  what  I  might  call  our 
Whistler  nights,  and  a  more  stimulating  talker 
than  Whistler  never  talked,  a  more  stimulating 
fighter  never  fought.  I  do  not  mean  in  the  im 
possible  way  meant  by  those  whose  judgment  of 
him  rests  solely  on  The  Gentle  Art.  They  think 
he  fought  for  no  other  end  than  to  make  enemies 
216 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

when,  really,  he  enjoyed  far  more  the  good  give- 
and-take  argument  that  preserved  to  him  his 
friends,  provided  those  friends  fought  fair  and 
did  not  play  the  coward,  or  the  toady,  to  escape 
the  combat. 

J.  and  I  have  written  his  Life  in  vain  if 
everybody  who  cares  to  know  anything  about  him 
does  not  know  that  from  1895  and  1896,  the 
greater  part  of  his  time  was  spent  in  London 
and  that  many  of  his  nights  were  then  given  to 
us,  more  particularly  towards  the  end  of  the 
amazing  decade.  We  paid  for  the  privilege  by 
the  loss  of  some  of  our  friends  who,  for  one  reason 
or  another,  cultivated  a  wholesome  fear  of 
Whistler.  Men  who  had  been  most  constant  in 
dropping  in,  dropped  in  no  longer — nor,  in  many 
cases,  have  they  ever  begun  to  drop  in  again. 
More  than  one  would  have  run  miles  to  escape 
the  chance  encounter,  trembling  with  appre 
hension  when  in  a  desperate  visit  they  seemed  to 
court  it,  and  often  the  several  doors  opening  into 
our  little  hall  served  as  important  a  part  in  pre 
venting  a  meeting  between  Whistler  and  the 
enemy  as  the  doors  in  the  old-fashioned  farce 
played  in  the  husband  and  wife  game  of  hide- 
and-seek. 

It  was  not  too  big  a  price  to  pay.  Whistler's 

217 


NIGHTS 

talk  was  worth  a  great  deal,  and  the  twelve  years 
that  have  passed  since  we  lost  it  forever  have 
not  lessened  its  value  for  us.  Ours  is  a  sadder 
world  since  we  have  ceased  to  hear  the  memo 
rable  and  unmistakable  knock  and  ring  at  our 
front  door,  the  prelude  to  the  talk,  rousing  the 
whole  house  until  every  tenant  in  the  other 
chambers  and  the  housekeeper  in  her  rooms 
below  knew  when  Whistler  came  to  see  us.  Our 
nights,  since  those  he  animated  and  made  as 
"  joyous"  as  he  liked  to  be  in  his  hours  of  play 
and  battle,  have  lost  their  savour.  We  are  per 
petually  referring  to  them,  quoting,  regretting 
them.  Even  Augustine  looks  back  to  them  as 
making  a  pleasant  epoch  in  her  life.  Often  she 
will  remind  me  of  this  night  or  that,  declaring 
we  have  grown  dull  without  him — but  do  I  re 
member  the  night  when  M.  Whistlaire  argued 
so  hard  and  with  such  violence  that  the  print  of 
the  rabbit  fell  from  the  wall  in  its  frame,  the 
glass  shivering  in  a  thousand  pieces,  just  when 
M.  Kennedy  was  so  angry  we  thought  he  was 
going  to  walk  away  forever,  and  how  after  that 
there  could  be  no  more  arguing,  and  M.  Whist 
laire  laughed  as  she  swept  up  the  pieces,  and 
M.  Kennedy  did  not  walk  away  alone,  but  later 
they  both  walked  away  together,  arm-in-arm,  to 
218 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

the  hotel  where  they  always  stayed? — and  do  I 
remember  how,  during  the  Boer  War,  he  would 
come  and  dine  with  me  alone,  his  pockets  stuffed 
with  newspaper  clippings,  and  how  he' would  put 
them  by  his  plate,  and  how  long  we  would  sit 
at  table  because  he  would  read  every  one  of  them 
to  me,  with  that  gay  laugh  nobody  laughs  now 
adays? — and  do  I  remember  that  other  evening 
when  he  and  Monsieur  disputed  and  disputed  she 
didn't  know  about  what,  and  how  excited  they 
got,  and  how  he  kept  banging  the  table  with  his 
knife,  the  sharp  edge  down,  until  he  cut  a  long  slit 
in  the  cloth,  and  it  was  our  best  table-cloth  too  ? — 
and  do  I  remember  the  long  stories  he  would  tell 
us  some  evenings  and  his  little  mocking  laugh 
when  she,  who  could  not  understand  a  word,  knew 
he  was  saying  something  malicious  about  some 
body? — and  do  I  remember  how  he  liked  a  good 
dinner  and  her  cooking  because  it  was  French, 
and  how  he  would  never  refuse  when  she  prom 
ised  him  her  pot-au-feu  or  one  of  her  salads — 
and  do  I  remember  one  after  another  of  those  old 
nights  the  like  of  which  we  shall  never  see  again  ? 
Do  I  remember  indeed  ?  They  fill  too  big  a  space 
in  memory,  they  overshadow  too  well  the  lesser 
nights  with  lesser  men,  they  were  too  joyous  an 
episode  in  our  thirty  long  years  of  talk  for  me 

219 


NIGHTS 

ever  to  forget  them.  The  three  classical  knocks 
of  the  Theatre  Franqais  could  not  announce  more 
certainly  a  night  of  beauty  or  wit  or  fun  or  ro 
mance  than  the  violent  ring  and  the  resounding 
knock  at  the  old  battered  door  of  the  Bucking 
ham  Street  chambers  where,  for  Whistler,  the 
oak  was  never  sported. 

But  of  our  Whistler  nights  we  have  already 
made  the  record — this  is  another  tale  that  is 
already  told.  I  think  Whistler  knew  their  value 
as  well  as  we  did,  knew  what  they  cost  us  in  the 
loss  of  friends,  knew  what  he  had  given  us  in 
return,  knew  what  he  had  revealed  to  us  of  him 
self  in  all  friendliness,  and  that  this  was  the 
reason  he  looked  to  us  for  the  record  not  only 
of  his  nights  with  us,  but  of  his  life.  Once  he 
had  confided  that  charge  to  us,  the  old  Bucking 
ham  Street  nights  grew  more  marvellous  still, 
full  of  reminiscences,  of  comment,  of  criticism, 
of  friendliness,  his  talk  none  the  less  stimulating 
and  splendid  because,  at  his  request,  the  cuff  or 
note-book  was  always  ready.  And  they  continued 
until  the  long  tragic  weeks  and  months  when  he 
was  first  afraid  to  go  out  at  night  and  then  unable 
to,  and  when  the  talks  were  by  day  instead — not 
quite  the  same  in  the  last,  the  saddest  months  of 
all,  for  weakness  and  thoughts  of  the  work  yet 
220 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

to  be  done  and  the  feebleness  that  kept  him  from 
doing  it  fell  like  a  black  cloud  over  all  our  meet 
ings,  even  those  where  the  old  gaiety  asserted 
itself  for  a  moment  and  the  old  light  of  battle 
gleamed  again  in  his  eyes.  To  the  end  he  liked 
the  talk  no  less  than  we,  for  to  the  end  he  sent 
for  us,  to  the  end  he  would  see  us  when  few  be 
sides  were  admitted.  There,  for  those  who  would 
like  to  question  his  friendship  with  us,  for  those 
who  believe  that  Whistler  never  could  keep  a 
friend  because  he  never  wanted  to,  is  the  proof 
dear  to  us  of  the  good  friend  he  could  be  when 
his  friendship  was  not  abused  or  taken  advantage 
of  behind  his  back. 

Many  other  nights  besides  there  have  been — 
long  series  of  American  nights — John  Van  Dyke 
nights  I  might  say,  Timothy  Cole  nights, — but 
no,  I  am  not  going  to  name  names  and  make  a 
catalogue,  I  am  not  going  to  write  their  story,  I 
am  not  going  to  run  the  risks  of  the  folly  I  have 
protested  against.  I  have  confessed  my  safe  be 
lief  that  of  the  living  only  good  should  be  spoken, 
and  good  only  when  it  is  within  the  bounds  of 
discretion.  It  is  not  my  ambition  to  rival  at 
home  the  unpopularity  of  N.  P.  Willis  in  Eng 
land  after  the  first  of  his  indiscretions,  which 

221 


NIGHTS 

seem  discretion  itself  now  in  the  light  of  to-day's 
yellow  and  society  journalism. 

And  there  have  been  English  nights — many — 
nights  with  old  friends  who  are  faithful  and  new 
friends  who  are  devoted — nights  of  late  so  like 
the  old  Thursday  nights  that  both  Hartrick  and 
Sullivan,  now  twenty  years  older  and  with  no  Phil 
May  to  revolve  round,  asked  why  those  old  mem 
orable  gay  nights  could  not  be  revived'?  But 
would  they  be  gay'?  Would  they  not  turn  out 
the  dust  and  ashes,  the  worse  than  Lenten  fare, 
from  which  I  shrink  ?  Would  they  not,  as  I  have 
said,  prove  as  mournful  as  that  banquet  of  Zola's 
Conquerors  of  Paris  ? 

Recently  there  have  been  Belgian  nights — 
nights  with  those  Belgian  artists  whose  habit  was 
never  to  travel  at  all  until  they  started  on  their 
journey  as  exiles  to  London — a  journey  to  which 
the  end  in  a  return  journey  seems  to  them  so 
tediously  long  in  coming.  And  there  have  been 
War  nights  when  the  clash  of  our  battle,  in  the 
grim  consciousness  of  that  other  battle  not  so  far 
away,  is  less  cheerful.  And  there  have  been 
nights  with  the  great  search-lights  over  the 
Thames  that  tell  us  as  much  as  those  young  in 
sistent  voices  in  Buckingham  Street  could  tell, 
but  only  of  things  so  tragic  and  so  sombre  that  I 
222 


NIGHTS:   IN  LONDON 

am  the  more  eager  to  finish  the  story  of  our  Lon 
don  nights  with  our  Thursdays,  in  the  years  when 
we  were  burdened  by  no  more  serious  fighting 
than  the  endless  fight  of  friend  with  friend,  of 
fellow  worker  with  fellow  worker,  fought  in  the 
good  cause  of  work  and  play,  faith  and  doubt, 
fear  and  hope — a  stirring  fight,  but  one  in  which 
words  are  the  weapons,  one  which  can  never  be 
won  or  lost,  since  no  two  can  ever  be  found  to 
agree  when  they  talk  for  pleasure,  nor  any  one 
man  forced  to  agree  with  himself  for  all  time. 


V 
NIGHTS 

IN  PARIS 


IN  PARIS 


I  STILL  go  to  Paris  every  year  in  May  when 
the  Salons  open,  but  now  I  go  alone.  The 
lilacs  and  horse-chestnuts,  that  J.  used  to 
reproach  me  for  never  keeping  out  of  the 
articles  it  was  my  business  to  write  there,  still 
bloom  in  the  Champs-Elysees  and  the  Bois,  but 
now  I  am  no  longer  tempted  to  drag  them  into  my 
MS.  The  spring  nights  still  are  beautiful  on  the 
Boulevards  and  Quais  but  only  ghosts  walk  with 
me  along  the  old  familiar  ways,  only  ghosts  sit 
with  me  at  table  in  restaurants  where  once  I 
always  ate  in  company.  Paris  has  lost  half  its 
charm  since  the  days  when,  as  regularly  as  spring 
came  round,  I  was  one  of  the  little  group  of  critics 
and  artists  and  friends  from  London  who  met  in 
it  for  a  week  among  the  pictures. 

It  was  much  the  same  group,  if  smaller,  that 
met  on  our  Thursday  nights  in  London.  Some 
of  us  went  for  work,  to  "do"  the  Salons  after  we 
had  "done"  the  Eoyal  Academy  and  the  New 
Gallery,  then  the  Academy's  only  London  rival: 
Bob  Stevenson  for  the  Pall  Mall,  D.  S.  MacColl 
for  the  Spectator,  Charles  Whibley  for  the 

227 


NIGHTS 

National  Observer.  J.,  during  several  years, 
spared  the  time  from  more  important  things  to 
fight  as  critic  the  empty  criticism  of  the  moment, 
the  old-fashioned  criticism  that  recognised  no 
masterpiece  outside  of  Burlington  House  and  saw 
nothing  in  a  picture  or  a  drawing  save  a  story : 
a  thankless  task,  for  already  the  old-fashioned 
criticism  threatens  to  become  the  new-fashioned 
again.  I,  for  my  part,  was  kept  as  busy  as  I 
knew  how  to  be,  and  busier,  for  the  Nation  and 
my  London  papers.  Others  went  because  they 
were  artists  and  wanted  to  see  what  Paris  was 
doing  and  May  was  the  season  when  Paris  was 
doing  most  and  was  most  liberal  in  letting  every 
body  see  it.  Beardsley  and  Furse  seldom  failed, 
and  I  do  not  suppose  a  year  passed  that  we  did 
not  chance  upon  one  or  more  unexpected  friends 
in  a  gallery  or  a  cafe  and  add  them  to  our  party. 
Sometimes  a  Publisher  was  with  us,  his  affairs 
an  excuse  for  a  holiday,  or  sometimes  an  Archi 
tect  to  show  the  poor  foreigner  how  respectable 
British  respectability  can  be  and,  incidentally,  to 
make  his  a  guarantee  of  ours  that  we  could  have 
dispensed  with.  Harland  and  Mrs.  Harland  were 
always  there,  I  do  believe  for  sheer  love  of  Paris 
in  the  May-time,  and  I  rather  think  theirs  was 
the  wisest  reason  of  all. 
228 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

During  no  week  throughout  my  hard-working 
year  did  I  have  to  work  harder  than  during  that 
May  week  spent  in  Paris.  I  am  inclined  now,  in 
the  more  leisurely  period  of  life  at  which  I  have 
arrived,  to  admire  myself  when  I  recall  how 
many  articles  I  had  to  write,  how  many  prints 
and  drawings,  statues  and  pictures,  I  had  to  look 
at  in  order  to  write  them,  and  my  success  in 
never  leaving  my  editors  in  the  lurch.  My  ad 
miration  is  the  greater  because  nobody  could 
know  as  well  as  I  how  slow  I  have  always  been 
with  my  work  and  also,  to  do  myself  justice,  how 
conscientious,  as  I  do  not  mind  saying,  though  to 
be  called  conscientious  by  anybody  else  would 
seem  to  me  only  less  offensive  than  to  be  called 
good-natured  or  amiable.  As  a  critic  I  never 
could  get  to  the  point  of  writing  round  the  pict 
ures  and  saying  nothing  about  them  like  many  I 
knew  for  whom  five  minutes  in  a  gallery  sufficed, 
nor,  to  be  frank,  did  I  try  to.  Neither  could  I 
hang  an  article  on  one  picture.  I  might  envy 
George  Moore,  for  an  interval  the  critic  of  the 
Speaker,  now  the  London  Nation,  because  he 
could  and  did.  I  can  remember  him  at  an  Acad 
emy  Press  View  making  the  interminable  round 
with  a  business-like  briskness  until,  perhaps  in 
the  first  hour  and  the  last  room,  he  would  come 

229 


NIGHTS 

upon  the  painting  that  gave  him  the  peg  for  his 
eloquence,  make  an  elaborate  study  of  it,  tell  us 
his  task  was  finished,  and  hurry  off  exultant.  But 
envy  him  as  I  might,  I  couldn't  borrow  his  brisk 
ness.  I  had  to  plod  on  all  morning  and  again  all 
afternoon  until  the  Academy  closed,  to  look  at 
every  picture  before  I  could  be  sure  which  was 
the  right  peg  or  whether  there  might  not  be  a 
dozen  pegs  and  more.  And  I  had  to  collect  elab 
orate  notes,  not  daring  to  trust  to  my  memory 
alone,  and  after  that  to  re-write  pages  that  did 
not  satisfy  me.  Just  to  see  the  Academy  meant 
an  honest  day's  labour  and  in  Paris  there  were 
two  Salons,  each  immeasurably  bigger,  and  in 
numerable  smaller  shows  into  the  bargain.  And 
yet,  that  laborious  May  week  never  seemed  to  me 
So  much  toil  as  pleasure. 

There  was  a  great  deal  about  Paris  the  toil 
left  me  no  chance  to  find  out.  I  should  not  like 
to  say  how  many  of  its  sights  I  have  failed  regu 
larly  to  see  during  the  visit  I  have  paid  to  it  every 
year  now  for  over  a  quarter  of  a  century.  But 
at  least  I  have  learned  the  best  thing  worth  know 
ing  about  it,  which  is  that  in  no  other  town  can 
toil  look  so  uncommonly  like  pleasure,  in  no  other 
town  is  it  so  easy  to  play  hard  and  to  work  hard 
at  the  same  time :  precisely  the  truth  the  Baedeker 
230 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

student  has  a  knack  of  missing,  the  truth  the 
special  kind  of  foreigner,  for  whom  Paris  would 
not  be  Paris  if  he  could  not  believe  it  the  abomina 
tion  of  desolation,  goes  out  of  his  way  to  miss.  I 
have  met  some  of  my  own  countrymen  who  have 
seen  everything  in  Paris  but  never  Paris  itself — 
the  old  story  of  not  seeing  the  wood  for  the  trees — 
and  who  are  absolutely  convinced  that  it  is  a 
town  in  which  all  the  people  think  of  is  amuse 
ment  and  that  a  more  frivolous  creature  than  the 
Parisian  never  existed.  From  their  comfortable 
seat  of  judgment  in  the  correct  hotels  and  the 
correct  show  places,  they  cannot  look  as  far  as 
the  schools  and  factories  that  make  Paris  the 
centre  of  learning  for  the  world  and  of  industry 
for  France,  and  they  are  in  their  way  every  bit 
as  dense  as  the  English  who  take  their  pleasure  so 
seriously  they  cannot  understand  the  French  who 
take  their  work  gaily.  "Des  blagueurs  meme  au 
feu/'  a  Belgian  officer  the  other  day  described  to 
me  the  French  soldiers  who  had  been  fighting  at 
his  side,  and  I  think  it  rather  finer  to  face  Death — 
or  Work — laughing  than  in  tears.  If  Paris  were 
not  so  gay  on  the  surface  I  am  sure  I  should  not 
find  it  so  stimulating,  though  how  it  would  be  if 
I  lived  there  I  have  never  dared  put  to  the  test, 
unwilling  to  run  whatever  risk  there  might  be  if 

231 


NIGHTS 

I  did.  I  prefer  to  keep  Paris  in  reserve  for  a 
working  holiday  or,  indeed,  any  sort  of  holiday, 
a  preference  which,  if  Heine  is  to  be  trusted,  I 
share  with  le  bon  Dieu  of  the  old  French  proverb 
who,  when  he  is  bored  in  Heaven,  opens  a  window 
and  looks  down  upon  the  Boulevards  of  Paris. 

At  the  first  sight,  the  first  sound,  the  first 
smell  of  Paris,  the  holiday  feeling  stirred  within 
us.  The  minute  we  arrived  we  began  to  play  at 
our  work  as  we  never  did  in  London,  as  it  never 
would  have  occurred  to  us  there  that  we  could. 

The  Academy,  only  the  week  before,  had 
given  us  the  same  chance  to  meet,  the  same  chance 
to  talk,  the  same  chance  to  lunch  together,  and  of 
the  lunch  it  had  got  to  be  our  habit  to  make  a 
Press  Day  function.  Nowadays  at  the  Academy 
Press  View,  when  I  am  hungry,  I  run  up  to 
Stewart's  at  the  corner  of  Bond  Street  for  a 
couple  of  sandwiches,  and  excellent  they  are,  but, 
as  I  eat  them  in  my  solitary  corner,  no  flight  of 
my  sluggish  imagination  can  make  them  seem  to 
me  more  than  a  stern  necessity.  There  was,  how 
ever,  a  festive  air  about  the  old  Press  Day  lunch 
when,  towards  one  o'clock,  some  six  or  eight  of 
us  adjourned  to  Solferino's,  another  vanished 
landmark  of  my  younger  days  in  London.  It  was 
in  Rupert  Street,  the  street  of  Prince  Florizel's 
232 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

Divan,  which  was  appropriate,  for  Bob  Steven 
son  was  always  with  us  and  but  for  Bob  Prince 
Florizel  might  never  have  existed  to  run  a  Divan 
in  Rupert  or  any  other  street.  Solferino's  had 
a  Barsac  that  Bob  liked  to  order,  chiefly  I  fancy 
for  all  it  represented  to  him  of  Paris  and 
Lavenue's  and  Barbizon  and  student  days,  and 
the  old  memories  warming  him  over  it  as  lunch 
went  on,  he  would  unfold  one  theory  of  art  after 
another  until  suddenly  a  critic,  more  nervous 
than  the  rest,  would  take  out  his  watch,  and  the 
hour  he  saw  there  would  send  us  post-haste  back 
to  Piccadilly  and  the  Academy,  which  at  that 
time  thought  one  Press  Day  sufficient. 

But  the  lunch  that  seemed  a  festivity  at  Sol- 
ferino's  never  gave  us  the  holiday  sense  Paris 
filled  us  with  from  the  early  hour  in  the  morning 
when,  after  our  little  breakfast,  we  met  down 
stairs  in  the  unpretentious  hotel  in  the  Rue  St. 
Roch  where  most  of  us  stayed — if  we  did  not  stay 
instead  at  the  Hotel  de  Tllnivers  et  Portugal  for 
the  sake  of  the  name.  The  Rue  St.  Roch  was 
convenient  and  if  we  were  willing  to  climb  to  the 
top  of  the  narrow  house,  where  the  smell  of  din 
ner  hung  heavy  on  the  stairs  all  through  the 
afternoon  and  evening,  we  could  have  our  room 
for  the  next  to  nothing  at  all  that  suited  our 

233 


NIGHTS 

purse,  and  the  dining-room — the  Coffee  Room  in 
gilt  letters  on  its  door  would  have  frightened  us 
from  it  in  any  case — was  so  tiny  it  was  a  kindness 
to  the  patron  not  to  come  back  for  the  midday 
breakfast  or  the  dinner  that  we  could  not  have 
been  induced  to  eat  in  the  hotel,  under  any  cir 
cumstances,  for  half  the  big  price  he  charged. 
The  day's  talk  was  already  in  full  swing  as  we 
steamed  down  the  Seine,  or  walked  under  the 
arcade  of  the  Rue  de  Bivoli  and  along  the  Quais, 
in  the  cool  of  the  May  morning,  to  the  new  Salon 
which  was  then  in  the  Champ-de-Mars.  And  one 
morning  at  the  Salon  made  it  clear  to  me,  as  years 
at  the  Academy  could  not,  why  French  criticism 
permits  itself  to  speak  of  art  as  a  "game"  and  of 
the  artist's  work  as  " amusing"  and  "gay." 
There  were  words  that  got  into  my  article  as 
persistently  as  the  lilacs  and  the  horse-chestnuts. 

II 

If  we  brought  to  Paris  a  talent  for  talk  and 
youth  for  enjoyment,  Paris  at  the  moment  was 
providing  liberally  more  than  we  could  talk  about 
or  had  time  to  enjoy.  London  may  have  been 
wide  awake — for  London — in  the  Nineties,  but 
it  was  half  asleep  compared  to  Paris  and  would 
not  have  been  awake  at  all  if  it  had  not  gone  to 
234 


af     m  m 


Etching  by  Joseph  Pennell 


IN  THE  CHAMPS-ELYSEES 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

Paris  for  the  "new"  it  bragged  of  so  loud  in  art 
and  every  excitement  it  cultivated,  and  for  the 
"fin-de-siecle/'  that  chance  phrase  passed  lightly 
from  mouth  to  mouth  in  Paris  of  which  it  made 
a  serious  classification. 

I  have  watched  with  sympathetic  amusement 
these  late  years  one  new  movement,  one  new  re 
volt  after  another,  started  and  led  by  little  men 
who  have  not  the  strength  to  move  anything  or 
the  independence  to  revolt  against  anything,  ex 
cept  in  their  boast  of  it,  and  who  would  be  fright 
ened  by  the  bigness  of  a  movement  and  revolt  like 
the  Secession  from  the  old  Salon  that  followed 
the  International  Exposition  of  1889.  I  feel  how 
long  ago  the  Nineties  were  when  I  hear  the  young 
people  in  Paris  to-day  talk  of  the  two  Salons  as 
the  Artistes-Frangais  and  the  Beaux-Arts.  In 
the  Nineties  we,  who  watched  the  parting  of  the 
ways,  knew  them  only  as  the  Old  Salon  and  the 
New  Salon  because  that  is  what  we  saw  in  them 
and  what  they  really  were — unless  we  dis 
tinguished  them  as  the  Champ-de-Mars  Salon 
and  the  Champs-Elysees  Salon,  for  another  ten 
years  were  to  pass  before  there  was  a  Grand 
Palais  for  both  to  move  into.  We  could  not  write 
about  either  without  a  reminder  of  the  age  of 
the  one  and  the  youth  of  the  other,  the  Old  Salon 

235 


NIGHTS 

remaining  the  home  of  the  tradition  that  has 
become  hide-bound  convention,  and  the  new  Salon 
offering  headquarters  to  the  tradition  that  is 
being  " carried  on,"  as  we  were  forever  pointing 
out,  borrowing  the  phrase  from  Whistler.  We 
were  given  in  the  Nineties  to  borrowing  the  things 
Whistler  said  and  wrote,  for  we  knew,  if  it  is  not 
every  critic  who  does  to-day,  that  he  was  as  great 
a  master  of  art  criticism  as  of  art. 

What  the  men  who  undertook  to  carry  on 
tradition  did  for  us  was  to  arrange  a  good  show. 
They  had  to,  if  it  meant  taking  off  their  coats  and 
rolling  up  their  sleeves  and  putting  themselves 
down  to  it  in  grim  earnest,  for  it  was  the  only 
way  they  could  justify  their  action  and  the  exist 
ence  of  their  Society,  and  their  choice  of  a  Presi 
dent,  the  very  name  of  Meissonier  seeming  to 
stand  for  anything  rather  than  secession  and  ex 
periment  and  revolt.  For  the  first  few  exhi 
bitions  many  of  the  older  men  got  together  small 
collections  of  their  earlier  work  that  had  not  been 
shown  publicly  for  years,  and  the  new  Salon's 
way  of  arranging  each  man's  work  in  a  separate 
group  or  panel  made  it  tell  with  all  the  more 
effect.  And  then  there  was  the  excitement  of 
coming  upon  paintings  or  statues  long  familiar, 
but  only  by  reputation  or  reproduction.  I  cannot 
236 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

forget  how  we  thrilled  in  front  of  Whistler's 
Rosa  Corder,  which  we  were  none  of  us,  except 
Bob  Stevenson,  old  enough  to  have  seen  when 
Whistler  first  exhibited  it  in  London  and  Paris 
to  a  public  unwilling  to  leave  him  in  any  doubt 
as  to  its  indifference,  how  we  talked  and  talked 
and  talked  until  we  had  not  time  that  morning  to 
look  at  one  other  painting  in  the  gallery,  how  it 
was  not  the  fault  of  our  articles  if  everybody  did 
not  squander  upon  it  the  attention  refused  not 
much  more  than  a  decade  before.  And  the 
younger  men  of  the  moment  had  to  summon  up 
every  scrap  of  individuality  they  possessed  to  be 
admitted,  and  not  to  be  admitted  meant  too  much 
conservatism  or  too  much  independence.  And 
credentials  of  fine  work  had  to  be  presented  by 
the  artists  from  all  over  the  world — Americans, 
Scandinavians,  Dutchmen,  Belgians,  Russians, 
Italians,  Germans,  Austrians,  Spaniards, — who 
couldn't  believe  they  had  come  off  if  the  New 
Salon  did  not  let  them  in,  and  half  the  time  they 
hadn't.  And  with  all  it  was  just  for  the  pride 
of  being  there,  they  were  not  out  for  medals,  since 
the  New  Salon  gave  no  awards.  And  altogether 
there  wafc  about  as  wide  a  gulf  of  principle  and 
performance  as  could  be  between  the  two  Salons 
that  are  now  separated  by  not  much  more  than 

237 


NIGHTS 

the  turnstiles  in  the  one  building  that  shelters 
them  both. 

And  sparks  of  originality  gleamed  here  and 
there;  the  passion  for  adventure  had  not  flick 
ered  out — at  every  step  through  the  galleries 
some  subject  for  the  discussion  we  exulted  in 
stopped  us  short.  It  might  be  Impressionism, 
Sisley  still  showing  if  Monet  did  not,  and 
Vibrism  and  Pointillism  and  all  the  other  isms 
springing  up  and  out  of  it.  It  might  be  Rosi- 
crucianism  and  Symbolism  which  had  just 
come  in,  and  Sar  Peladan — does  anybody  to-day 
read  the  Sar's  long  tedious  books,  bought  by  us 
with  such  zeal  and  promptly  left  to  grow  dusty 
on  our  shelves  ? — and  Huysmans  and  their  fellow 
teachers  of  Magic  and  members  of  the  Bose-Croix 
were  being  interpreted  in  paint  and  in  black-and- 
white,  and  if  the  interpretations  did  not  interpret 
to  so  prosaic  a  mind  as  mine,  it  mattered  the  less 
because  they  were  often  excuse  for  a  fine  design. 
And  the  square  brush  mark  lingered,  and  much 
was  heard  of  the  broken  brush  mark,  and  values 
had  not  ceased  to  be  absorbing,  nor  la  peinture 
au  premier  coup  and  la  peinture  en  plein  air  to 
be  wrangled  over.  And  a  religious  wave  from 
nobody  knew  where  swept  artists  to  the  Scrip 
tures  for  motives  and  sent  them  for  a  back- 
238 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

ground,  not  with  Holman  Hunt  to  Palestine,  but 
to  their  own  surroundings,  their  own  country,  to 
the  light  and  atmosphere  each  knew  best — Lher- 
mitte's  Christ  suffered  little  children  to  come 
unto  Him  in  a  French  peasant's  cottage;  Edel- 
f  elt's  Christ  walked  in  the  sunlight  of  the  North ; 
Jean  Beraud's  Christ  found  Simon  the  Pharisee 
at  home  in  a  Parisian  club;  and  no  landscape, 
realistic,  impressionistic,  decorative,  was  com 
plete  unless  a  familiar  figure  or  group  came  stray 
ing  into  it  from  out  the  Bible.  Much  that  was 
done  perished  with  the  group  or  the  fad  that 
gave  it  birth,  much  when  suddenly  come  upon 
now  on  the  walls  of  the  provincial  gallery  looks 
disconcertingly  old-fashioned.  But  nevertheless, 
the  movement,  the  energy,  the  life  of  the  Nineties 
was  a  healthy  enemy  to  that  stagnation  which  is 
a  death  trap  for  art. 

And  Black-and- White  was  a  section  to  be 
visited  in  the  freshness  of  the  morning,  not  to 
be  put  off,  like  the  dull,  shockingly  over-crowded 
little  room  at  the  Academy,  to  the  last  hurried 
moments  of  fatigue — a  section  to  devote  the  day 
to  and  then  to  leave  only  for  the  bookstall  or  book 
shop  where  we  could  invest  the  money  we  had 
not  to  spare  in  the  books  and  magazines  and 
papers  illustrated  by  Carlos  Schwabe  and 

239 


NIGHTS 

Khnopf  and  Steinlen  and  Willette  and  Caran 
D'Ache  and  Louis  Legrand  and  Forain  and  the 
men  whose  work  in  the  original  we  had  been 
studying  and  laying  down  the  law  about  for 
hours.  And  the  artist's  new  invention,  his  new 
experiment,  came  as  surely  as  the  spring — now 
the  original  wood  block  and  now  the  colour  print, 
one  year  the  draughtsman's  Holbein-ijispired 
portrait  and  another  the  poster  that  excited  us 
into  collecting  Cheret  and  Toulouse-Lautrec  at  a 
feverish  rate  and  facing  afterwards,  as  best  we 
could,  the  problem  of  what  in  the  world  to  do 
with  a  collection  that  nothing  smaller  than  a 
railroad  station  or  the  hoardings  could  accom 
modate. 

And  the  Sculpture  court  was  not  the  accus 
tomed  chill  waste,  dreary  as  the  yard  crowded 
with  marble  tombstones.  If  nobody  else  had  been 
in  it — and  many  were — Rodin  was  there  to  heat 
the  atmosphere,  his  name  kindling  a  flame  of 
criticism  long  before  his  work  was  reached. 
Beyond  his  name  he  was  barely  known  in  Lon 
don,  where  I  remember  then  seeing  no  work  of 
his  except  his  bust  of  Henley,  who,  during  a  visit 
to  Paris,  I  believe  his  only  one,  had  sat  to  Rodin 
and  then,  ever  after,  with  the  splendid  enthusi 
asm  he  lavished  on  his  friends,  had  preached 
240 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

Rodin.  But  in  Paris  at  the  New  Salon  there 
was  always  plenty  of  the  work  to  explain  why 
the  name  was  such  a  firebrand — disturbing,  ex 
citing,  faction-making — as  I  look  back,  culminat 
ing  in  the  melodramatic  Balzac  that  would  have 
kept  us  in  hot  debate  for  all  eternity  had  there 
not  been  innumerable  things  to  interest  us  as 
much  and  more. 

The  critic  has  simply  to  take  his  task  as  we 
took  ours  and  not  another  occupation  in  life  can 
prove  so  brimming  over  with  excitement.  In  the 
early  Nineties  I  had  not  a  doubt  that  it  could 
always  be  taken  like  that.  I  would  not  have 
believed  the  most  accredited  prophet  who  proph 
esied  that  we  would  outlive  our  interest  in  the 
New  Salon.  And  yet,  a  year  came  when,  of  the 
old  group,  only  D.  S.  MacColl  and  I  met  in  the 
Champ-de-Mars  and  he,  with  boredom  in  his  face 
and  voice,  assured  me  he  had  found  nothing  in 
it  from  end  to  end  except  a  silk  panel  decorated 
by  Conder,  and  so  helped  to  kill  any  belief  I  still 
cherished  in  the  emotion  that  does  not  wear  itself 
out  with  time. 

However,  this  melancholy  meeting  was  not 

until  the  Nineties  were  nearing  their  end,  and 

up  till  then  our  days  were  an  orgy  of  art  criticism 

and  excitement  in  it.    In  Paris,  as  in  Rome,  as  in 

16  241 


NIGHTS 

Venice,  as  in  London,  only  night  set  me  free  for 
the  pleasure  that  was  apart  from  work.  As  a 
rule,  none  of  us  dared  at  the  Salons  to  interrupt 
our  work  there  even  to  make  a  function  of  the 
midday  breakfast,  as  we  did  of  lunch  at  the  Acad 
emy,  the  days  in  Paris  being  so  remarkably  short 
for  all  we  had  to  do  in  them.  We  were  forced  to 
treat  it  as  a  mere  halt,  regrettable  but  unavoid 
able,  in  the  day's  appointed  task,  whether  we  ate 
it  at  the  Salon  to  save  time  or  in  some  near  little 
restaurant  to  save  money.  Often  we  were 
tempted,  and  few  temptations  are  more  difficult 
to  resist  than  the  unfolding  of  the  big,  soft 
French  napkin  at  noon  and  the  arrival  of  the 
radishes  and  butter  and  the  long  crisp  French 
bread.  When  I  was  alone  I  escaped  by  going  to 
one  of  the  little  tables  in  that  gloomy  corner  of 
the  Salon  restaurant  where  there  was  no  napkin 
to  be  unfolded,  no  radishes  and  butter  to  lead  to 
indiscretion,  and  nothing  more  elaborate  was 
served  than  a  sandwich  or  a  brioche,  a  cup  of 
coffee  or  the  glass  of  Madeira  which  sentiment 
makes  it  a  duty  for  the  good  Philadelphian  to 
drink  whenever  and  wherever  it  comes  his  way. 
The  temptation  being  so  strong,  it  is  useless  to 
pretend  that  we  never  fell.  If  we  had  not,  I 
should  not  have  memories  of  breakfasts  in  the 
242 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

Salon,  under  the  trees  at  Ledoyen's,  on  the  Tour 
Eiffel,  in  the  classic  shade  of  the  Palais  Royal 
from  which  all  the  old  houses  had  not  been  swept 
away,  and  as  far  from  the  scene  of  work  as  the 
close  neighborhood  of  the  Bourse  where  we  could 
scarcely  have  got  by  accident.  But  the  thought 
of  the  work  waiting  was  for  me  the  disquieting 
mummy  served  with  every  course  of  the  feast. 
Not  until  the  Salon  door  closed  upon  my  drooping 
back  and  weary  feet,  turning  me  out  whether  I 
would  or  no,  in  the  late  hours  of  the  afternoon, 
was  I  at  liberty  to  remember  how  many  other 
things  there  are  in  life  besides  work. 

Ill 

The  hour  when  all  Paris  had  settled  down  to 
the  business  of  pleasure — to  proving  itself  the 
abomination  of  desolation  to  those  who  were 
already  too  sure  to  be  in  need  of  a  proof — was 
an  enchanting  hour  to  find  one's  self  at  liberty. 
The  heat  of  the  day  was  over,  the  air  was  cool, 
the  light  golden,  the  important  question  of  dining 
could  be  considered  in  comfort  on  enticing  little 
chairs  in  the  shady  alleys  of  the  Champs-Elysees 
or,  better  still,  on  little  chairs  no  less  enticing 
with  little  tables  in  front  of  them  at  the  nearest 
cafe,  where  an  aperitif  was  to  be  sipped  even  if 

243 


NIGHTS 

it  were  no  more  deadly  than  a  groseille  or  a  gren 
adine.  What  the  aperitif  was  did  not  matter; 
what  did,  was  the  reason  it  gave  for  half  an 
hour's  loafing  before  dinner  with  all  the  loafing 
town. 

Had  we  lived  in  Paris,  no  doubt  we  would 
have  done  as  we  did  in  Rome  and  Venice  and 
have  gone  every  night  to  the  same  restaurant 
where  the  same  greeting  from  the  same  smiling 
patron  and  the  same  table  in  the  same  corner 
awaited  us.  But  change  and  experiment  and  a 
good  deal  of  preliminary  discussion  over  an 
aperitif  were  more  in  the  order  of  a  week's  visit. 
As  a  rule,  we  preferred  the  small  restaurant  that 
was  cheap,  as  we  were  most  of  us  impecunious, 
also  the  restaurant  that  was  out-of-doors,  out-of- 
doors  turning  the  simplest  dinner  into  a  feast. 
However,  nobody  yet  was  really  ever  young  who 
was  never  reckless.  Occasionally  we  dined  joy 
ously  beyond  our  means,  and  one  memorable  year 
we  devoted  our  nights  to  giving  each  other  din 
ners  where  the  best  dinners  were  to  be  had.  Those 
alone  who  are  blest  with  little  money  and  the 
obligation  of  making  that  little  can  appreciate 
the  splendour  of  our  recklessness,  just  as  those 
alone  who  work  all  day  and  eat  sparingly  can 
have  the  proper  regard  for  a  good  dinner.  I  do 
244 


^^ESSsssaB^spS^^I^^^S^T ,  />iir  1 


Etching  by  Joseph  Pennell 

THE  HALF  HOUR  BEFORE  DINNER 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

not  regret  the  recklessness,  I  am  not  much  the 
poorer  for  it  to-day  whatever  I  was  at  the  time, 
and  I  should  have  missed  something  out  of  life 
had  I  not  once  dined  recklessly  in  Paris.  More 
over,  our  special  business  was  the  study  of  art 
and  in  Paris  dining  and  art  are  one,  though  the 
foolish  man  in  less  civilized  countries  preaches 
that  to  eat  for  any  other  purpose  than  to  live  is 
gluttony.  The  clear  intellect  of  the  French  saves 
them  from  that  mistake,  and  I  have  entertained 
hopes  for  the  future  of  my  own  country  ever  since 
one  wise  American, — Henry  T.  Finck, — discover 
ing  the  truth  that  the  French  have  always  had 
the  common  sense  to  know,  proclaimed  it  in  a 
book  which  I  have  honoured  by  placing  it  in  my 
Collection  of  Cookery  Books  with  Grimod  de  la 
Reyniere,  Brillat-Savarin  and  Dumas. 

At  the  time  we  were  more  concerned  with  the 
dinner  than  the  philosophy  of  dining.  Our  one 
aim  was  to  dine  well,  whether  it  was  the  right 
thing  or  the  wrong,  even  whether  or  no  it  sent 
us  back  to  London  bankrupt.  We  did  not  flinch 
before  the  price  we  paid,  and  if  we  were  too  wise 
to  measure  the  value  of  the  dinner  by  its  cost, 
we  were  proud  of  the  bigness  of  the  bill  as  the 
" visible  sign,"  the  guarantee  of  success.  It  was 
a  tremendous  triumph  for  J.  when  he  paid  the 

245 


NIGHTS 

biggest  of  all,  which  he  did,  not  so  much  because 
he  set  out  to  deliberately  as  because,  by  the  choice 
of  chance,  he  had  invited  us  to  Voisin's  in  the 
Rue  St.  Honore,  where  the  red-cushioned  seats, 
the  mirrors,  the  white  paint,  the  discreet  gilding, 
the  air  of  retirement,  the  few  elderly,  rotund, 
meditative  diners,  each  dining  with  himself,  were 
all  typical  of  the  old  classical  Paris  restaurant, 
and  assured  us  beforehand  of  a  good  dinner  and 
a  price  in  keeping.  That  we  ate  asparagus  from 
Argenteuil  and  petites  fraises  des  ~bois  I  know 
because  the  season  was  spring ;  that  the  wine  was 
good  I  also  know  because  the  reputation  of 
Voisin's  cellar  permitted  of  no  other.  And  I  am 
as  sure  that  the  menu  was  so  short  that  ours 
would  have  seemed  the  dinner  of  an  anchorite  in 
the  City  of  London,  for  if  we  could  not  dine  often 
we  were  masters  of  the  art  of  dining  when  we 
did,  and  we  understood,  as  the  Lord  Mayor  and 
the  City  Companies  of  London,  celebrated  for 
their  dinners,  do  not,  that  dining  is  not  an  art 
when  the  last  course  cannot  be  enjoyed  as  much 
as  the  first.  As  I  keep  the  family  accounts,  I  was 
obliged  to  pay  in  another  way  for  JVs  triumph 
at  Voisin's  when  I  got  back  to  London  and  faced 
a  deficit  that  had  to  be  balanced  somehow  in  my 
weekly  bills  for  the  rest  of  the  month.  But,  at 
246 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

least,  if  abstaining  has  to  be  done,  London  is  the 
easiest  place  to  abstain  in  as  Paris  is  the  best  to 
dine  in. 

The  Publisher  who  was  with  us  that  year  gave 
his  dinner  at  the  LaPerouse  on  the  Quai  des 
Grands- Augustins,  and  it  was  not  his  fault  if  he 
fell  short  of  J.  's  triumph  by  a  few  francs.  The 
giver  of  a  dinner  at  the  LaPerouse  in  the  happy 
past  enjoyed  the  fearful  pleasure  of  not  knowing 
how  much  he  was  spending  until  he  called  for  his 
bill,  price  being  too  trivial  a  detail  for  a  place  in 
the  menu,  and  usually  when  the  bill  came  it  ex 
ceeded  his  most  ambitious  hopes.  The  Publisher 
must  have  hit  upon  Friday,  for  the  perfume  of 
Bouillabaisse  mingles  with  my  memories  of  the 
dinner  in  the  little  low  entresol  where,  by  stoop 
ing  down  and  craning  our  necks,  we  could  see  the 
towers  of  Notre-Dame  from  the  window,  and 
where  the  big,  tall,  handsome,  black-bearded 
patron,  alarmingly  out  of  scale  with  the  room, 
came  to  make  sure  of  our  pleasure  in  his  dishes — 
he  would  rather  the  bill  had  gone  unpaid  than 
have  seen  the  dinner  neglected.  I  think  there 
was  a  bottle  of  some  special  Burgundy  in  its 
cradle,  for  rarely  in  his  life,  I  fancy,  has  the  Pub 
lisher  felt  so  in  need  of  being  fortified.  Early  in 
the  day  he  had  been  guilty  of  the  astonishing  in- 

247 


NIGHTS 

discretion,  as  it  then  seemed,  of  buying  three  Van 
Goghs.  For  this  happened  years  before  anybody 
had  begun  to  buy  Van  Gogh — years  before  any 
body  had  begun  to  hear  of  Van  Gogh — years  be 
fore  Post-Impressionism  had  been  invented  and 
had  launched  its  crop  of  Cubists  and  Futurists 
and  Vorticists  as  direct  descendants  of  Van  Gogh 
and  Cezanne  who  would  assuredly  have  been  the 
first  to  repudiate,  them.  The  Publisher  had  gone 
unsuspectingly,  confidingly,  with  J.  to  Mont- 
martre  and  there,  among  other  haunts,  into  the 
now  celebrated  little  shop  where  the  paintings 
Van  Gogh  used  to  give  in  exchange  for  paints 
littered  the  whole  place,  and  where  the  dealer 
thought  it  a  bargain  if,  for  a  few  francs,  he  could 
get  rid  of  canvases  that  now  fetch  their  hundreds 
and  thousands  of  pounds.  J.  would  have  invested 
had  he  had  the  few  francs.  Not  having  them,  he 
persuaded  the  Publisher  to,  and  to  buy  three  of 
the  best  into  the  bargain,  and  never  did  his  own 
empty  pockets  stand  in  the  way  of  a  more  profit 
able  investment,  for  had  he  bought  not  all  but 
only  a  few  in  this  wilderness  of  Van  Goghs,  and 
had  he  sold  them  again  as  he  would  never  have 
done,  we  might  now,  if  we  chose,  dine  every  night 
at  the  LaPerouse  or  Voisin's  and  prepare  for  the 
reckoning  without  a  tremor.  If  I  write  of  the 
248 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

buying  of  these  pictures  as  if  they  were  stocks 
and  shares,  it  is  because  that  is  the  way  the 
creators  of  the  "Van  Gogh-Cezanne-Gauguin 
boom"  have  appraised  them,  appealing  to  the 
modern  collector  who  collects  for  the  money  in 
art,  not  the  beauty.  That  night  at  the  LaPerouse 
the  Publisher  was  dazed  by  his  unexpected  rash 
ness  as  art  patron ;  to-day,  when  he  points  to  the 
one  of  the  three  paintings  still  hanging  on  his 
walls,  he  flatters  himself  that  he  discovered  Van 
Gogh  before  the  multitude. 

Bob  Stevenson  took  us  to  dine  at  Lavenue's 
in  Montparnasse,  and  if  he  had  not  of  his  own 
free  will  we  should  have  compelled  him  to.  He 
belonged  there.  At  Lavenue's  he  and  Louis  Ste 
venson  dined  when  they  were  young  in  Paris,  it 
was  always  cropping  up  in  Bob's  talk  of  the  old 
days,  it  plays  its  part — "the  restaurant  where  no 
one  need  be  ashamed  to  entertain  the  master" — 
in  the  opening  chapters  of  The  Wrecker,  which 
I  think  as  entertaining  as  any  chapters  Louis 
Stevenson  ever  wrote  in  that  or  any  other  book. 
The  dinner,  of  which  I  recall  nothing  in  par 
ticular,  did  not  interest  me  as  much  as  the  place 
itself.  To  see  Bob  Stevenson  at  Lavenue's  was 
like  seeing  Manet  at  the  Nouvelle  Athenes  or  Dr. 
Johnson  at  the  Cheshire  Cheese,  and  to  make  the 

249 


NIGHTS 

background  complete  Alexander  Harrison,  with 
two  or  three  American  painters  of  his  generation, 
was  dining  at  a  near  table. 

He  shall  be  nameless  who  gave  the  dinner  at 
Marguery's.  The  dinner  was  all  it  should  have 
been,  for  we  ate  the  sole  called  after  the  house. 
It  was  the  provider  of  it  who  proved  wanting. 
I  was  brought  up  to  believe  that  the  host,  when 
there  is  a  host,  should  pay  his  bill.  A  large  part 
of  my  life  has  been  spent  in  getting  rid  of  the 
things  I  was  brought  up  to  believe,  but  this  par 
ticular  belief  I  have  never  been  able  to  shed  and 
I  confess  I  was  taken  aback — let  me  put  it  at 
that — when  the  white  paper  neatly  folded  in  a 
plate,  served  at  the  end  of  dinner,  was  passed 
on  to  one  of  the  guests.  If  the  debt  then  run  into 
was  not  paid  does  not  much  matter  after  all  these 
years,  or  perhaps  if  it  was  not  it  has  the  more 
interest  for  the  curious  observer  of  modes  and 
moods.  In  this  case,  the  whole  incident  could  be 
reduced  to  a  kindness  on  the  part  of  the  debtor, 
sacrificing  himself  to  show  how  right  Bob  Ste 
venson  was  when  he  said,  as  Robert  Louis  Steven 
son  repeated  after  him  in  print,  that  while  the 
Anglo-Saxon  can  and  does  boast  that  he  is  not 
as  Frenchmen  in  certain  matters  of  morals,  it 
is  his  misfortune  to  be  as  little  like  them  in  their 
250 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

vigorous  definition  of  honesty  and  the  obligation 
of  paying  their  debts. 

That  the  fifth  dinner  was  at  the  Tour  d' Argent 
is  not  an  achievement  to  be  particularly  proud  of. 
On  the  contrary,  it  appears  to  me  a  trifle  banal 
as  I  look  back  to  it,  for  fashion  was  at  the  time 
sending  Americans  and  English  to  the  Tour 
d' Argent  just  as  it  was  driving  them  on  beau 
tiful  spring  days  into  that  horribly  crowded 
afternoon  tea  place  in  the  Rue  Daunou — wasn't 
it  ? — or  to  order  their  new  gowns  at  the  new  dress 
makers  in  the  Rue  de  la  Paix,  or  to  do  any  of 
the  hundred  and  one  other  things  that  proved 
them  up  to  the  times,  at  home  in  Paris,  initiated 
into  le  dernier  cri  or  whatever  new  phrase  they 
thought  set  the  seal  upon  Parisian  smartness. 
Frederic's  face  was  as  well  known  as  Ibsen's 
which  it  so  resembled,  his  sanded  floor  was  the 
talk  of  the  tourists,  the  distinguished  foreigner 
struggled  to  have  his  name  on  Frederic's  menu, 
and  as  for  Frederic's  pressed  duck  it  had  degen 
erated  into  as  everyday  a  commonplace  as  an 
oyster  stew  in  New  York  or  a  chop  from  the 
grill  in  London.  The  bill  at  the  end  of  the  even 
ing  might  be  all  that  the  occasion  demanded  of 
the  man  who  was  giving  the  dinner,  but  his  choice 
of  restaurant  could  not  convict  him  of  originality, 

251 


NIGHTS 

or  of  sentiment  either.  But  I  do  not  know  why  I 
grumble  when  the  dinner  was  so  good.  The  Tour 
d' Argent  had  not  fallen  as  most  restaurants  fall 
when  they  attract  patrons  from  across  the 
Channel.  Frederic's  cooking  was  beyond  re 
proach.  Even  the  theatrical  ceremony  over  his 
pressed  duck  could  not  spoil  its  flavour. 

The  sixth  evening  saw  us  at  Prunier's,  eat 
ing  the  oysters  that  it  would  have  been  useless  to 
go  to  Prunier's  and  not  to  eat  (we  must  have 
been  in  Paris  unusually  early  in  May  that  year), 
and  if  it  was  not  the  season  to  eat  the  snails  for 
which  Prunier's  is  equally  renowned,  my  heart 
was  not  broken.  It  may  give  me  away  to  confess 
that  I  do  not  like  them,  since  snails  are  one  of  the 
unconsidered  trifles  that  no  Autolycus  posing  as 
gourmet  should  turn  a  disdainful  back  upon.  But 
what  can  I  do  ?  It  is  a  case  of  Dr.  Fell,  and  that  is 
the  beginning  and  end  of  it.  And  if  it  wasn't  the 
season  for  snails,  and  if  I  wouldn't  have  eaten 
them  if  it  had  been,  in  Prunier's  gilded  halls 
other  delicacies  are  served,  and  when  I  summon 
up  remembrance  of  those  dinners  past,  Prunier's 
does  not  exactly  take  a  back  seat. 

But  naturally,  the  most  important  dinner  in 
my  opinion  was  mine  at  the  Cabaret  Lyonnais 
in  the  Rue  de  Port-Mahon,  where  never  again 
252 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

can  I  invite  my  friends,  for  the  Cabaret  has  gone 
into  the  land  of  shadows  with  so  many  of  the 
group  who  sat  round  my  table.  At  the  time,  there 
was  no  looking  back,  no  sad  straying  into  a  dead 
past  to  spoil  a  good  dinner — at  the  worst,  a  fleet 
ing  moment  of  discomfort  when  we  selected  the 
tench  swimming  in  the  tank  close  to  our  table 
and  saw  them  carried  off  to  the  kitchen  to  be 
cooked  for  us.  It  was  the  custom  of  the  house, 
intended  to  be  a  pleasing  assurance  that  our  fish 
was  fresh,  but  a  custom  with  just  a  savour  in  it 
of  cannibalism.  I  have  never  cared  to  be  on 
speaking  terms  with  the  creatures  I  am  about  to 
eat.  I  squirm  when  I  see  the  lobster  for  my  salad 
squirming,  though  I  know  the  risk  if  it  should 
not  squirm  at  all.  Had  I  lived  in  the  country 
among  my  own  chickens  and  pigs  and  lambs,  I 
should  have  been  long  since  a  confirmed  vege 
tarian.  But  to  go  to  the  Cabaret  Lyonnais  un 
willing  to  swallow  my  scruples  with  my  fish 
would  have  been  as  useless  as  to  go  to  Simpson's 
in  London  and  object  to  a  cut  from  the  joint, 
as  I  do  object,  which  is  why  I  seldom  go.  Any 
way,  we  did  not  have  to  see  the  beef  killed  for  the 
-filet  which  at  the  Cabaret  we  were  expected  to 
eat  after  the  tench  and  with  the  potatoes  to  which 
the  city  of  Lyons  also  gives  its  name,  so  asso- 

253 


NIGHTS 

elating  itself  forever  with  the  perfume  of  the 
onion.  And,  as  in  the  Provinces,  the  wine  was 
the  petit  vin  gris  which  I  never  can  drink  with 
out  a  vision  of  the  straight,  white,  poplar-lined 
roads  of  France,  sunshine,  a  tandem  tricycle  or 
two  bicycles,  J.  and  myself  perched  upon  them, 
and  by  the  way  friendly  little  inns  with  a  good 
breakfast  or  dinner  waiting,  and  a  big  carafe  of 
the  pale  light  wine  served  with  it.  That  my  din 
ner  was  comparatively  cheap  would  at  normal 
times  have  been  for  me  delightfully  in  its  favour. 
But  that  it  was  the  cheapest  of  all  in  that  week 
of  dinners  meant  that  I  came  out  last  in  the  race 
when,  by  every  law  of  justice,  I  should  have  been 
first.  In  Paris  as  in  London  my  "  greedy 
column, "  as  my  friends  called  it  with  the  straight 
forwardness  peculiar  to  friends,  had  to  be  writ 
ten  every  week  for  the  Pall  Mall  and  mine  was 
the  enviable  position  of  finding  my  copy  in  eat 
ing  good  dinners  no  less  than  in  going  to  the 
Salons.  If  any  one  had  an  irreproachable  excuse 
for  extravagant  living,  it  was  I. 

But  even  I,  with  the  excuse,  could  not  afford 
the  extravagance — one  weekly  article  did  not  pay 
for  one  cheap  dinner  for  eight — at  the  Cabaret 
Lyonnais.  And  as  the  rest  of  the  party  were 
without  the  excuse  and  no  better  equipped  for 
254 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

the  extravagance,  we  never  again  gave  each  other 
dinners  on  the  same  lavish  scale  and  rarely  on 
any  scale,  henceforward  ordering  them  on  the 
principle  of  what  Philadelphia  in  my  youth 
called  "a  Jersey  treat."  I  do  not  say  that 
economy  was  invariably  our  rule.  We  could  be, 
on  occasions,  so  rash  that  before  our  week  was 
up  we  had  to  begin  to  count  our  francs,  put  by 
for  the  boat  sandwich  and  the  reluctant  tips  of 
the  return  journey,  and  eat  the  last  meals  of  all 
in  the  Duval,  which,  if  admirable  as  a  place  to 
economize  in,  is  no  more  conducive  to  gaiety  than 
a  London  A.B.C.  shop  or  Childs's  in  New  York. 
Once  we  were  so  reduced  that  at  noon  I  was  left 
to  a  lonely  brioche  at  the  Salon,  and  the  men  went 
to  breakfast  at  the  nearest  cabman's  eating-house, 
where  they  made  the  sensation  of  their  lives, 
without  meaning  to  and  without  finding  in  it 
any  special  compensation.  The  most  respectable 
of  the  respectable  architectural  group  of  our 
Thursday  nights  was  of  the  party  and  where  he 
went  the  top  hat  and  frock  coat,  in  which  I  used 
to  think  he  must  have  been  born,  went  too.  If 
his  fashion-plate  correctness — men  wore  frock 
coats  then — made  him  conspicuous  at  our  Thurs 
day  nights  it  can  be  imagined  what  he  was  sitting 
with  his  coat  tails  in  the  gutter  at  the  cabman's 

255 


NIGHTS 

table  where  the  glazed  hat  and  the  three-caped 
coat  of  the  Paris  cocker  set  the  fashion.  He  had 
the  grace  to  be  ashamed  of  himself,  often  apolo 
gizing  for  his  clothes  and  assuring  us  that  he 
could  not  help  himself,  which  was  his  reason,  I 
fancy,  for  accepting  at  an  early  age  the  profes 
sorial  chair  where  the  decorum  of  his  hat  and 
coat  was  in  need  of  no  apology. 

IV 

I  have  said  we  were  young.  It  seems  super 
fluous  to  add  that  now  and  then,  in  the  sunshine 
of  the  perfect  May  day,  with  the  call  of  the  lilacs 
and  the  horse-chestnuts  getting  into  our  heads  as 
well  as  into  my  copy,  the  Salon  grew  stuffy  be 
yond  endurance,  work  became  a  crime,  and  we 
put  up  our  catalogues  and  note-books  before  the 
closing  hour  and  hurried  anywhere  just  to  be 
out-of-doors,  as  if  our  sole  profession  in  life  was 
to  idle  it  away.  After  all,  only  the  prig  can  be  in 
Paris  when  May  is  there  and  not  play  truant 
sometimes. 

The  year  Paris  chose  our  week  to  show  how 
hot  it  can  be  in  May  when  it  has  a  mind  to,  was 
the  year  I  got  to  learn  something  of  the  Paris 
suburbs.  The  joyous  expedition  which  ended  our 
every  day  that  year  was  so  in  the  spirit  of  Har- 
256 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

land  that  I  should  be  inclined  to  look  upon  him 
as  the  tempter,  had  we  not,  with  the  usual  ami 
ability  of  the  tempted,  met  him  more  than  half 
way.  Still,  he  excelled  us  all  in  the  knack  of 
collecting  us  from  our  work,  no  matter  how  it 
had  scattered  us  or  in  what  quarter  of  the  town 
we  might  be,  and  carrying  us  off  suddenly  out  of 
it  in  directions  we  none  of  us  had  dreamed  of  the 
minute  before,  just  as  he  would  collect  and  carry 
us  off  suddenly  in  London.  Only,  he  was  more 
resourceful  in  Paris  because  in  Paris  more  re 
sources  were  made  to  his  hand.  There  are  as 
beautiful  places  round  London — that  is,  beau 
tiful  in  the  English  way — as  round  Paris,  but 
they  do  not  invite  to  a  holiday  with  the  charm 
no  sensible  man  can  resist.  The  loveliness  of 
Hampton  Court  and  Richmond  and  Hampstead 
Heath  and  the  River  is  not  to  be  denied  and  yet, 
gay  as  the  English  playing  there  manage  to  look, 
the  only  genuine  gaiety  is  the  Bank  Holiday 
maker's.  Tradition  consecrates  the  loveliness 
bordering  upon  Paris  to  the  gaiety  to  which 
Gravarni  and  Murger  are  the  most  sympathetic 
guides,  and  none  could  have  been  more  to  Har- 
land's  fancy.  He  was  very  like  his  own  favour 
ite  heroes,  or  I  ought  to  say  his  own  favourite 
heroes  were  very  like  him.  For  it  is  Harland 
17  257 


NIGHTS 

who  talks  through  his  own  pages  with  his  own 
charming  fantastic  blend  of  philosophy  and  non 
sense,  Harland  who  refuses  to  believe  in  an  age 
of  prose  and  prudence,  Harland  who  is  deter 
mined  to  see  the  romance,  the  squalor,  the  pag 
eantry,  the  humour  of  this  jumble-show  of  aworld, 
not  merely  at  ease  from  the  stalls,  but  struggling 
with  the  principal  role  on  the  stage,  or  prompting 
from  behind  the  scenes.  When  he  was  bent  upon 
leading  us  to  the  same  near,  inside,  part  in  the 
spectacle,  it  was  extraordinary  how,  as  if  by  in 
spiration,  he  always  hit  upon  the  right  expedi 
tion  for  the  time  of  the  year  and  the  mood  of  the 
moment. 

I  remember  the  afternoon  he  said  St.  Cloud  it 
seemed  as  inevitable  that  we  must  go  there  as 
if  St.  Cloud  had  been  our  one  thought  all  day 
long,  the  evening  reward  promised  for  our  day's 
labour;  just  as  on  the  boat  steaming  down  the 
Seine  and  in  the  park  wandering  under  the  trees 
and  among  the  ruins,  I  felt  that  the  afternoon 
was  the  one  of  all  others  predestined  for  our 
delight  there.  The  beauty  provided  by  St.  Cloud 
and  the  mood  we  brought  for  its  enjoyment  met 
at  the  hour  appointed  from  all  eternity. 

Artists,  it  is  supposed,  and  not  without  reason, 
are  trained  to  see  beauty  more  clearly  and  there- 
258 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

fore  to  feel  it  more  acutely  than  other  people. 
But  my  long  experience  has  taught  me  that  it  is 
the  lover  of  beauty  who  can  dare  to  be  flippant  in 
the  face  of  it,  just  as  it  is  the  devout  who  can 
afford  to  talk  familiarly  of  holy  things.  Besides, 
artists  work  so  hard  that  they  have  the  sense  to 
know  how  important  it  is  to  be  foolish  at  the 
right  time.  That  is  the  secret  of  all  the  delicious 
absurdities  of  what  the  French  called  the  Vie  de 
Boheme  until  the  outsider  who  did  not  under 
stand  made  a  tiresome  cliche  of  it.  The  right 
time  for  our  folly  we  felt  was  the  golden  May 
evening  and  the  right  place  a  beautiful  Paris 
suburb,  time  and  place  consecrated  to  folly  by 
generations  of  artists  and  students.  Below  us,  at 
St.  Cloud,  stretched  the  wide  beautiful  French 
landscape,  with  its  classical  symmetry  and  its 
note  of  sadness,  in  the  pure  clear  light  of  France, 
the  Seine  winding  through  it  towards  Paris; 
round  us  was  the  park  as  classical  in  its  lines 
and  masses,  and  with  its  note  of  sadness  the 
stronger  because  of  the  tragic  memories  that 
haunt  it ;  in  the  foreground  were  my  companions 
agreeably  playing  the  fool  and  posing  as  living 
statues  on  the  broken  columns :  he  whose  solem 
nity  of  demeanour  accorded  with  his  belief  that 
his  real  sphere  was  the  pulpit,  throwing  out  an 

259 


NIGHTS 

unaccustomed  leg  as  Mercury  on  one  column,  and 
on  another  the  Architect,  an  apologetic  Apollo 
in  frock  coat  with  silk  hat  for  lyre.  In  my  light  - 
heartedness,  and  accustomed  to  the  ways  of  the 
English,  I  thought  them  absurd  but  funny.  A 
French  family,  however,  who  passed  by  chance 
looked  as  if  they  wondered,  as  the  French  have 
wondered  for  centuries,  at  the  sadness  with  which 
the  Englishman  takes  his  pleasures. 

Beardsley  was  one  of  the  party.  It  was  the 
first  time  he  was  with  us  in  Paris,  the  first  time, 
for  that  matter,  he  had  ever  been  there.  He  had 
clutched  beforehand,  like  the  youth  he  was,  at 
the  pleasure  the  visit  promised,  and  I  remember 
his  joy  in  coming  to  tell  me  of  it  one  morning  in 
Buckingham  Street.  I  remember  too  how  amaz 
ing  I  thought  it  that,  when  he  got  there,  he 
seemed  at  once  to  know  Paris  in  the  mysterious 
way  he  knew  everything. 

We  had  not  heard  of  his  arrival  until  we  ran 
across  him  at  the  Vernissage  in  the  New  Salon. 
I  think  he  had  planned  the  dramatic  effect  of  the 
chance  meeting,  counting  upon  the  impression 
he  would  make  as  we  met.  I  have  said  he  was 
always  a  good  deal  of  a  dandy  and  I  could  see 
at  what  pains  he  had  been  to  invent  the  costume 
he  thought  Paris  and  art  demanded  of  him.  He 
260 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

was  in  grey,  a  harmony  carefully  and  quite  ex 
quisitely  carried  out,  grey  coat,  grey  waistcoat, 
grey  trousers,  grey  Suede  gloves,  grey  soft  felt 
hat,  grey  tie  which,  in  compliment  to  the  French, 
was  large  and  loose.  An  impression  of  this  grey 
elegance  is  in  the  portrait  of  him  by  Blanche, 
painted,  I  think,  the  same  year.  As  he  came 
through  the  galleries  towards  us  with  the  tripping 
step  that  was  characteristic  of  him,  a  little  light 
cane  swinging  in  his  hand,  he  was  the  most  strik 
ing  figure  in  them,  dividing  the  stares  of  the  star 
ing  Vernissage  crowd  with  the  clou  of  the  year's 
New  Salon:  that  portrait  by  Aman-Jean  of  his 
wife,  with  her  hair  parted  in  the  middle  and 
brought  simply  down  over  her  ears,  which  set  a 
mode  copied  before  the  season  was  over  by  women 
it  disfigured,  heroines  who  could  dare  the  un 
becoming  if  fashion  decreed  it.  Beardsley  knew 
he  was  being  stared  at  and  of  course  liked  it,  and 
probably  would  not  have  exchanged  places  with 
anybody  there,  not  even  with  Carolus-Duran 
when,  splendidly  barbered,  in  gorgeous  waist 
coat,  and  with  an  air  of  casualness,  the  cher 
maitre  et  president  strolled  into  the  restaurant 
at  the  supreme  moment,  carefully  chosen,  all  the 
crowd  there  before  him,  their  breakfast  ordered, 
their  first  pangs  of  hunger  stilled,  and  their  atten- 

261 


NIGHTS 

tion  and  enthusiasm  at  liberty  for  the  greeting  he 
counted  upon,  and  got. 

It  may  be  that  this  scene  of  the  older  genera 
tion's  triumph  and  the  power  of  officialism  in 
art  told  on  Beardsley's  nerves,  or  it  may  be  it 
was  simply  because  he  was  still  young  enough  to 
believe  nobody  had  ever  been  young  before,  but 
certainly  by  evening  he  had  worked  himself  up 
into  a  fine  frenzy  of  revolt.  When  we  had  got 
through  our  foolish  game  of  living  statues,  and 
had  settled  down  to  dinner  in  a  little  restaurant, 
where  a  parrot's  greeting  of  "Apres  vous, 
madame!  Apres  vous,  monsieur!"  had  vouched 
for  the  excellence  of  its  manners,  and  where  we 
could  look  across  the  river  and  see  for  ourselves 
how  true  were  the  effects  that  Cazin  used  to  paint 
and  that  seemed  so  false  to  those  who  knew  noth 
ing  of  French  twilight,  and  when  Beardsley  had 
finished  his  first  glass  of  very  ordinary  wine  well 
watered,  he  let  us  know  what  he  thought  about 
les  vieux  and  their  stultifying  observance  of 
worn-out  laws  and  principles. 

That  started  Bob  Stevenson,  who  saw  an 
argument  and,  for  the  sake  of  it,  became  ponder 
ously  patriarchal,  hoary  with  convention.  In 
point  of  years,  it  is  true,  he  was  older  than  any 
of  us,  but  no  matter  what  his  age  according  to 
262 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

the  Family  Bible  he  was  to  the  end,  and  would 
have  been  had  he  lived  to  be  a  hundred,  the 
youngest  in  spirit  of  any  company  into  which  he 
ever  strayed  or  could  stray.  His  way,  however, 
was,  as  Louis  Stevenson  described  it,  "to  trans 
migrate  "  himself  into  the  character  or  pose  he 
assumed  for  the  moment  and  no  Heavy  Father 
was  ever  heavier  than  he  that  night  at  St.  Cloud. 
He  spoke  with  the  air  of  superior  knowledge  cal 
culated  to  aggravate  youth.  With  years,  he  as 
sured  Beardsley,  men  learned  to  value  law  and 
order  in  art,  as  in  the  state,  at  their  worth ;  and, 
more  and  more  inspired  by  his  theme,  as  was  his 
way,  he  grew  preposterously  wise  and  irritating, 
and  he  talked  himself  so  successfully  into  every 
exasperating  virtue  of  age  that  I  could  not 
wonder  at  the  fierceness  with  which  Beardsley 
turned  upon  him  and  denounced  him  roundly  as 
conventional  and  academic  and  prejudiced  and 
old-fashioned  and  all  that  to  youth  is  most  odious 
and  that  to  Bob,  when  not  playing  a  part,  was 
most  impossible.  In  harmony  with  his  new  role, 
he  showed  himself  a  miracle  of  forbearance  under 
Beardsley 's  reproaches  and  sententious  beyond 
endurance,  actually  called  Beardsley  young,  his 
cardinal  offence,  for  the  young  hate  nothing  so 
much  as  to  be  reminded  of  the  youth  for  which 

263 


NIGHTS 

the  old  envy  them.  Bob's  almost  every  sentence 
began  with  the  unendurable  "at  my  age,"  which 
irritated  Beardsley  the  more,  while  we  roared  at 
the  farce  of  it  in  the  mouth  of  one  to  whom  years 
never  made  or  could  make  a  particle  of  differ 
ence.  He  wound  up  by  the  warning  in  sooth 
ing  tones  that  Beardsley,  in  his  turn  burdened 
with  years,  would  understand,  would  be  able  to 
make  allowances,  as  all  must  as  they  grow  older, 
or  life  would  be  an  endless  battle  for  the  in 
dividual  as  for  the  race.  Beardsley,  luckily  for 
himself,  did  not  live  to  lose  his  illusions,  and  I 
fancy  that  to  not  one  of  us  who  listened  to  their 
talk  did  it  occur  that  we  were  in  danger  of  los 
ing  ours  with  age,  so  immortal  does  youth  seem 
while  it  lasts. 

The  adventure  of  other  afternoons  worked  out 
so  surprisingly  in  Harland's  vein  that  he  might 
have  invented  it  for  his  books  or  we  might  have 
borrowed  it  from  them.  The  encounter  with  a 
peacock  at  a  cafe  in  the  Bois,  to  which  he  swept 
us  off  at  the  end  of  the  hottest  of  those  hot  May 
days,  was  one  of  many  that  he  afterwards  made 
use  of.  Had  he  not,  I  might  hesitate  to  recall  it, 
knowing  as  I  do  that  its  wit  must  be  lost  upon 
the  younger  generation  of  to-day  who  face  life 
and  work  with  a  severity,  a  solemnity,  that  alarms 
264 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

me.  Their  inability  to  take  themselves  with 
gaiety  is  what  makes  the  young  men  of  the 
Twentieth  Century  so  hopelessly  different  from 
the  young  men  of  the  Eighteen-Mneties.  Their 
high  moral  ideal  and  concern  with  social  prob 
lems  would  not  permit  them  to  see  anything  to 
laugh  at  in  the  experiment  of  feeding  a  peacock 
on  cake  steeped  in  absinthe,  but  it  struck  us,  in 
our  deplorable  frivolity,  as  humorous  at  the  time, 
our  consciences  the  less  disturbed  because  the  bird 
was  led  into  temptation  in  the  manner  of  one  to 
whom  it  was  no  new  thing  to  yield.  Harland, 
when  he  wrote  the  story  with  the  mock  serious 
ness  he  was  master  of,  suggested  that  the  crime 
was  in  its  having  been  committed  by  an  irre 
proachable  British  author,  the  sober  father  of  a 
family.  More  momentous  to  us,  accessories  to 
the  crime,  was  the  fact  that  the  cake  stuck,  a 
conspicuous  lump,  in  the  peacock's  conspicuous 
throat.  For  what  seemed  hours  we  waited  in 
tense  agitation,  torn  between  our  desire  to  make 
sure  the  lump  would  disappear  and  our  fears 
of  discovery  before  it  did.  But  the  peacock  was 
a  gentleman  in  his  cups  and  reeled  away  to  swal 
low  the  lump  and,  I  hope,  to  sleep  off  his  debauch, 
in  some  more  secluded  spot  where,  if  he  were  dis 
covered,  we  should  not  be  suspected. 

265 


NIGHTS 

There  was  another  afternoon  I  wonder  Har- 
land  did  not  make  use  of  which,  had  I  been  in  a 
pedantic  mood,  I  might  have  taken  as  an  object- 
lesson  in  the  art  and  occupation  of  shocking  the 
bourgeois.  We  had  been  tempted  and  had  yielded 
as  unreservedly  as  the  peacock,  with  the  differ 
ence  that  our  temptation  took  the  form  of  the 
sunshine  and  the  convenience  of  the  train  ser 
vice  at  St.  Lazare.  No  sane  person  with  such 
sunshine  out-of-doors  could  stay  shut  up  in  the 
Salon  and  a  train  was  ready  at  St.  Lazare,  when 
ever  we  chose  to  catch  it,  to  carry  us  off  to  Ver 
sailles.  We  were  on  our  way  at  once  after  our 
midday  breakfast. 

Versailles  was  too  beautiful  on  that  beautiful 
day  to  ask  anything  of  us  except  to  live  in  the 
beauty,  to  make  it  ours  for  the  moment ;  too  beau 
tiful  to  spare  us  time  for  bothering  about  those 
who  had  been  there  before  us;  too  beautiful  to 
allow  the  guide-book's  fine  print  and  maps  and 
diagrams  to  blind  our  eyes  to  the  one  essential 
fact  that  the  sun  was  shining,  that  the  trees  were 
in  the  greenest  growth  of  their  May-time,  that 
the  flowers  were  radiant  with  the  fulfilment  of 
spring  and  the  promise  of  summer.  As  a  place 
full  of  history  we  must  have  known  it,  had  we 
never  heard  its  name.  History  stared  at  us  from 
266 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

the  grey  palace  walls,  history  waylaid  us  in  the 
formal  alleys,  lurked  in  the  formal  waters, 
haunted  the  formal  gardens,  overshadowed  all 
the  leafy  pleasant  places.  There  is  no  getting 
very  far  from  history  at  Versailles  no  matter 
how  hard  one  may  try  to.  But  we  had  no  inten 
tion  to  let  the  dead  past  blot  out  the  new  life 
rekindling — to  give  its  chill  to  the  young  spring 
day  and  its  sadness  to  the  foolish  young  people 
out  for  a  holiday — to  wither  the  fresh  beauty 
that  makes  it  good  just  to  be  alive,  just  to  have 
eyes  to  see  and  freedom  to  use  them. 

I  can  write  this  now,  but  I  would  not  have 
dared  to  say  it  then.  Not  only  I,  but  every  one 
of  us,  would  have  been  as  ashamed  to  be  caught 
indulging  in  sentiment,  or  " bleating,"  as  the 
National  Observer.  The  chances  are  we  were 
talking  as  much  nonsense  as  could  be  talked  to 
the  minute,  for  there  was  nothing  we  liked  to 
talk  better,  nothing  that  served  us  so  well  to  dis 
guise  the  emotion  we  thought  out  of  place  in  the 
world  in  which  so  obviously  the  self-respecting 
man's  business  was  to  fight.  But  if  I  had  not  felt 
the  beauty  it  would  not  now,  so  many  years  after, 
remain  as  my  most  vivid  impression  of  the  day. 

We  had  Versailles  to  ourselves  at  first.  We 
were  alone  in  the  park,  alone  in  the  alleys  and 

267 


NIGHTS 

avenues,  alone  in  the  gardens, — and  the  palace 
and  its  paintings  could  not  tempt  us  in  out  of 
the  sunshine.  But  such  good  luck  naturally  did 
not  last  and  while  we  were  loitering  near  the 
great  fountain  we  saw  a  party  of  women  with 
the  eager,  harassed,  conscientious  look  that  marks 
the  personally-conducted  school-ma'am  on  tour, 
bearing  briskly  down  upon  us,  each  with  a  red  book 
in  one  hand,  a  pencil  in  the  other,  all  engrossed 
in  the  personally-conducted  school-ma'am's 
holiday  task  of  checking  off  the  sight  disposed 
of,  pigeon-holing  the  last  guide-book  fact  veri 
fied.  Their  methodical  progress  was  an  offence 
to  us  in  the  mood  we  were  in,  would  be  an  offence 
on  a  May  day  to  the  right-minded  in  any  mood.  I 
admit  they  could  have  turned  upon  us  and  asked 
what  we  were,  anyway,  but  tourists  as,  after  a 
fashion,  no  doubt  we  were.  But  they  could  not 
have  accused  us  of  the  horrible  conscientiousness, 
the  deadly  determination  to  see  the  correct  things 
and  to  think  the  correct  thoughts  about  them  that 
dulls  the  personally-conducted  to  the  world's  real 
beauty  and  its  meaning — the  same  tendency  of 
the  multitude  to  follow  like  sheep  the  accepted 
leader  and  never  venture  to  explore  fresh  fields 
for  themselves,  that  drove  Hugo  to  writing  his 
Hernani,  and  Gautier  to  wearing  his  red  waist- 
268 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

coat,  and  all  the  other  Romanticists  to  their 
favourite  pastime  of  shocking  the  bourgeois. 
Versailles  was  so  wonderful  on  the  face  of  it 
that  we  resented  the  presence  of  people  who 
needed  a  book  to  tell  them  so  and  to  explain  why ; 
and  we  made  our  protest  against  the  bourgeois 
in  our  own  fashion  or,  to  be  exact,  in  Furse's 
fashion.  He  was  then  blessedly  young,  fresh 
from  the  schools  and  not  yet  sobered  by  Aca 
demic  honours,  though  already  a  youthful  mem 
ber  of  the  New  English  Art  Club,  from  whom 
an  attitude  of  general  defiance  was  required.  He 
raged  and  raved  in  his  big  booming  voice,  de 
clared  that  tourists  ought  to  be  wiped  off  the 
face  of  the  earth,  that  the  women  were  a  hideous 
blot  on  the  landscape,  that  the  guide-books  were 
disgracefully  out  of  tone,  that  it  was  unbearable 
and  he  wasn't  going  to  bear  it,  and  by  his  sudden 
satisfied  smile  I  saw  he  had  found  out  how  not  to. 
As  the  school-ma'ams  came  within  earshot: 

"It's  beastly  hot,"  he  boomed  to  us,  "what  do 
you  say  to  a  swim?" 

And  he  took  off  his  coat,  he  took  off  his  waist 
coat,  he  took  off  his  necktie,  he  unbuttoned  his 
collar, — but  already  the  school-ma'ams  had  scut 
tled  away,  the  more  daring  glancing  back  once 

269 


NIGHTS 

or  twice  as  they  went,  their  dismay  tempered  by 
curiosity. 

Furse  was  pleased  as  a  child  over  his  success, 
vowed  he  was  ready  for  all  the  tourists  impudent 
enough  to  think  they  had  a  right  to  share  Ver 
sailles  with  us,  and,  when  a  group  of  Germans 
talked  their  guttural  way  towards  us,  he  had  us 
all  down  on  our  knees,  before  we  knew  it,  nibbling 
at  the  grass  like  so  many  Nebuchadnezzars  es 
caped  from  Oharenton — an  amazing  sight  that 
brought  the  chorus  of  "Colossals"  to  an  abrupt 
stop,  and  sent  the  Germans  flying. 

It  may  be  objected  that  we  were  behaving 
in  a  fashion  that  children  would  be  sent  to  bed 
without  any  supper  for,  that  it  was  worse  than 
childish  to  take  pleasure  in  shocking  innocent 
tourists  much  better  behaved  than  ourselves.  But 
there  wasn't  any  pleasure  in  it.  If  we  set  out  to 
shock  them,  it  was  to  get  rid  of  them,  that  was 
all  we  wanted,  and  it  made  me  see  that  the  suc 
cession  of  young  rebels  who  have  loved  to  epater 
le  bourgeois  never  wanted  anything  more  either — • 
except  the  self-conscious  young  rebels  who  play 
at  rebellion  because  they  fancy  it  the  surest  and 
quickest  way ' '  to  arrive. ' ' 

It  is  less  easy  to  say  why  a  beautiful  day  at 
Versailles  should  have  sent  us  back  to  Paris  sing- 
270 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

ing  American  songs — or  to  give  credit,  if  credit 
is  due,  it  was  the  rest  of  the  party  who  returned 
to  the  music  of  their  own  voices;  I,  who  to  my 
sorrow  cannot  as  much  as  turn  a  tune,  never  am 
so  imprudent  as  to  raise  my  voice  in  song  and  so 
add  my  discord  to  any  singing  in  public  or  in 
private.  Had  they  been  heard  above  the  noise  of 
the  train,  the  explanation  of  those  who  saw  us 
when  we  got  to  St.  Lazare  probably  would  have 
been  that  we  were  a  company  of  nigger  minstrels. 
By  accident,  or  sheer  inattention,  when  we 
climbed  upstairs  on  the  double-decked  suburban 
train,  we  chose  the  car  just  behind  the  locomotive 
and  memory  has  not  cleaned  away  the  black  that 
covered  our  faces  when  we  climbed  down  again. 
It  was  all  very  foolish — and  no  less  foolish 
were  the  afternoons  in  the  depths  of  Pontaine- 
bleau  or  the  sunlit  green  thickets  of  Saint-Ger 
main — no  less  foolish  any  of  those  afternoons  in 
the  forest  or  the  park  to  which  a  long  drive  by 
train,  or  tram,  had  carried  us.  And  I  am  pre 
pared  to  admit  the  folly  to-day  as  I  sit  at  my 
elderly  desk  and  look  out  to  the  London  sky,  grey 
and  drear  as  if  the  spring  had  gone  with  my 
youth.  But  if  I  never  again  can  be  so  foolish, 
at  least  I  am  thankful  that  once  I  could,  that  once 
long  ago  I  was  young  in  Paris,  "the  enchanted 

271 


NIGHTS 

city  with,  its  charming  smile  for  youth," — that 
once  I  believed  in  folly  and,  in  so  believing,  had 
learned  more  of  the  true  philosophy  of  life  than 
the  most  industrious  student  can  ever  dig  out  of 
his  books. 

V 

The  afternoon  at  Versailles  was  the  rare  ex 
ception.  We  were  too  keen  about  our  work,  or 
too  dependent  on  it,  to  play  truant  often,  how 
ever  gay  the  sunshine  and  convenient  the  trains. 
Nor  was  it  any  great  hardship  not  to,  especially 
after  we  had  broken  loose  once  or  twice  so  suc 
cessfully  as  to  make  sure  we  had  not  forgotten 
how.  If  we  did  stay  in  the  Salon  until  we  were 
turned  out,  the  last  to  leave,  Paris  was  neither 
so  dull  nor  so  ugly  at  night  that  we  need  sigh  for 
the  suburbs.  It  was  an  amusement  simply  to 
drink  our  coffee  in  front  of  a  cafe,  to  go  on  with 
the  talk  that  must  have  had  a  beginning  some 
time  somewhere,  but  that  never  got  anywhere 
near  an  end,  and  to  watch  the  life  of  the  Paris 
streets. 

I  had  got  my  initiation  into  cafe  life  that  first 

year  in  Italy  and  had  finished  my  education  by 

cycle  on  French  roads,  where  every    evening 

taught  me  the  difference  between  the  country 

272 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

where  there  is  a  cafe  to  pass  an  hour  in  over  a 
glass  of  coffee  after  dinner,  and  England  where 
choice  in  the  small  town  then  lay  between  imme 
diate  bed  or  the  intolerable  gloom  of  the  Coffee 
Room.  It  is  the  real  democrat  like  the  French 
man  or  the  Italian  who  knows  how  to  take  his 
ease  in  a  cafe;  the  Englishman,  who  hasn't  an 
inkling  of  what  the  democracy  he  boasts  of 
means,  fights  shy  of  it.  He  does  not  mind  mak 
ing  use  of  it  when  he  is  away  from  home,  but  he  is 
likely  to  be  thanking  his  stars  all  the  time  that 
in  his  part  of  the  world  nothing  so  promiscuous 
is  possible.  I  tried  to  point  out  its  advantages 
once  to  an  English  University  man. 

"  Aoh 1"  he  said,  "you  know  at  Oxford  we  had 
our  wines  and  we  weren't  bothered  by  people." 

But  it  is  just  the  people  part  of  it  that  is 
amusing,  the  more  so  if  the  background  is  the 
Street  of  a  French  or  an  Italian  town. 

Some  nights  we  went  to  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix 
on  the  Rive  Droite;  other  nights,  to  the  Cafe 
d'Harcourt  on  the  Rive  Gauche;  and  occasionally 
to  the  Cafe  de  la  Regence  where  many  artists 
went,  especially  foreign  artists,  and  more  espe 
cially  Scandinavians.  I  seem  to  retain  a  vision  of 
Thaulow,  a  blond  giant  more  than  fitting  in  the 
corner  of  the  little  raised  enclosure  in  the  front 
is  273 


NIGHTS 

of  the  cafe.  My  one  other  recollection  is  of  a 
story  I  heard  there,  though  of  the  painter  who 
told  it  I  can  recall  only  that  he  was  a  Belgian. 
If  I  recall  the  story  so  well,  it  must  be  because  it 
struck  me  at  the  time  as  characteristic  and  in 
memory  became  forever  after  associated  with  the 
little  open  space  I  was  looking  over  to  as  I 
listened,  amused  and  interested,  while  the  flower 
women  pushed  past  their  barrows  piled  high  with 
the  big  round  bunches  of  budding  lilies-of-the- 
valley  you  see  nowhere  save  in  Paris.  It  is  im 
possible  for  me  to  think  of  the  cafe  without  think 
ing  of  the  little  Place,  nor  of  the  little  Place 
without  at  once  hearing  again  the  artist's  voice 
lingering  joyfully  over  the  adventures  of  his 
youth. 

The  story  was  one  of  a  kind  I  had  often 
listened  to  at  the  Nazionale  in  Rome  and  the 
Orientale  in  Venice — a  story  of  student  days — 
a  story  of  two  young  painters  coming  to  Paris 
in  their  first  ripe  enthusiasm,  with  devotion  to 
squander  upon  the  masters,  upon  none  more 
lavishly  than  upon  Jules  Breton,  which  explains 
what  ages  ago  it  was  and  how  young  they  must 
have  been.  They  were  at  the  Salon,  standing  in 
silent  worship  before  Breton's  peasant  woman 
with  a  scythe  against  a  garish  sunset,  when  they 
274 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

heard  behind  them  an  adoring  voice  saying  the 
things  they  were  thinking  to  one  they  knew  must 
be  the  cher  maitre  himself,  and  they  felt  if  they 
could  once  shake  his  hand  life  could  hold  no 
higher  happiness.  The  worship  of  the  vounff  is 
pleasant  to  the  old.  Breton  let  them  shake  Ms 
hand  and,  more,  he  kept  them  at  his  side  until 
his  visit  to  the  Salon  was  finished,  and  then  sent 
them  away  walking  on  air.  They  were  leaving 
the  next  day.  In  the  morning  they  went  to  the 
Rue  de  Rivoli  to  buy  toys  to  take  home  to  their 
little  brothers  and  sisters,  and  one  selected  a  dog 
and  the  other  a  mill,  and  when  wound  up  the  dog 
played  the  drum  and  cymbals  and  the  mill  turned 
its  wheel  and,  children  themselves,  they  were 
ravished  and  would  not  have  the  toys  wrapped 
up  but  carried  them  back  in  their  arms  to  the 
hotel,  stopping  in  the  Avenue  de  I'Opera  to  wind 
up  the  mill  and  see  the  wheel  go  round  again. 
And  as  they  stood  enchanted,  the  mill  wheel  turn 
ing  and  turning,  who  should  come  towards  them 
but  the  cher  Maitre.  It  was  too  late  to  run,  too 
late  to  hide  the  mill  with  its  turning  wheel  and 
the  dog  with  its  foolish  drum.  They  longed  to 
sink  through  the  ground  in  their  mortification — 
they,  the  serious  students  of  yesterday,  to  be 
caught  to-day  playing  like  silly  children  in  the 

275 


NIGHTS 

open  street.  But  how  ineffable  is  the  condescen 
sion  of  the  great!  The  master  joined  them. 

"Tiens,"  he  said,  "and  the  wheel,  it  goes 
round  ?  But  it  works  beautifully.  Let  us  wind 
it  up  again!" 

Cannot  you  see  the  little  comedy, — the  fine 
old  prophet  with  the  red  ribbon  in  his  button 
hole,  the  two  trembling,  adoring  students,  the  toy 
with  its  revolving  wheel,  all  in  the  gay  sunlight 
of  the  Avenue  de  I'Opera,  and  not  a  passer-by 
troubling  to  look  because  it  was  Paris  where  men 
are  not  ashamed  to  be  themselves.  The  two 
painters  preserved  this  impression  of  the  kind 
ness  of  the  master  long  after  they  ceased  to  wor 
ship  at  the  shrine  of  the  peasant  with  her  scythe 
posed  against  the  sunset. 

One  duty  the  Boulevards  of  the  Left  Bank 
imposed  upon  us  in  the  Nineties  was  the  search 
f  or  Verlaine  and  Bibi-la-Puree,and  many  another 
poet  for  all  time  and  celebrity  for  the  day,  in  the 
cafes  where  they  waited  to  be  found  and  I  do  not 
doubt  were  deeply  disappointed  if  nobody  came 
to  find  them.  The  fame  of  these  great  men,  who 
were  easily  accessible  when  the  cafe  they  went  to 
happened  to  be  known,  had  crossed  to  London 
with  so  much  else  London  was  labelling  fin-de- 
siecle.  To  have  met  them,  to  be  able  to  speak  of 
276 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

them  in  intimate  terms,  to  be  authorities  on  the 
special  vice  of  each,  was  the  ambition  of  the 
yearning  young  decadents  on  the  British  side  of 
the  Channel,  who  imagined  in  the  intimacy  a 
proof  of  their  own  emancipation  from  it  would 
have  been  hard  to  say  what,  their  own  genius  for 
revolution  if  it  was  not  clear  what  reason  they 
had  to  revolt.  We,  who  cultivated  a  withering 
scorn  for  decadence  and  the  affectation  of  it, 
were  moved  by  nothing  more  serious  or  ambitious 
than  youth's  natural  desire  to  see  and  to  know 
everything  that  is  going  on,  and  we  could  not 
have  been  very  ardent  in  our  search,  for  I  never 
remember  once,  on  the  nights  we  devoted  to  the 
hunt,  tracking  these  lions  to  their  lair.  How 
ever,  at  least  one  of  our  party  had  better  luck 
when  he  started  on  the  hunt  without  us.  Accord 
ing  to  a  rumour  at  the  time,  the  respectable 
British  author,  sober  father  of  a  family,  who  fed 
the  peacock  on  cake  steeped  in  absinthe,  was  once 
seen  in  broad  daylight  with  the  Reine  de  Golconde 
on  his  arm,  walking  down  the  BouV  Mich'  at  the 
head  of  a  band  of  poets. 

Verlaine  I  did  meet,  but  it  was  in  London, 
where  admiring,  or  philanthropic,  young  Eng 
lishmen  brought  him  one  winter  to  lecture  and 
the  subject  as  announced  was  "  Contemporary 

277 


NIGHTS 

French  Poetry, "  and  through  all  these  years  I 
have  managed  to  preserve  the  small  sheet  of 
announcement  with  Arthur  Symons's  name  and 
"kind  regards"  written  below,  a  personal  little 
document,  for  it  was  Symons  who  got  up  the 
show,  and  he  and  Herbert  P.  Home  who  sold  the 
tickets.  Instead  of  lecturing,  Verlaine  read  his 
verses  to  the  scanty  audience,  all  of  whom  knew 
each  other,  in  the  dim  light  of  Barnard's  Inn 
Hall,  and  the  music  of  their  rhythm  was  in  his 
voice  so  that  I  was  not  conscious  of  the  satyr-like 
repulsiveness  of  his  face  and  head  so  long  as  he 
was  reading.  When  he  was  not  reading,  the  re 
pulsiveness  was  to  me  overpowering  and  I  shrank 
from  his  very  presence.  Nor  was  the  shrinking 
less  when  I  talked  with  him  the  night  after  his 
lecture,  at  a  dinner  where  my  place  was  next  to 
his.  He  was  like  a  loathsome  animal  with  his  de 
cadent  face,  his  yellow  skin,  and  his  little  bestial 
eyes  lighting  up  obscenely  as  he  told  me  of  the  two 
women  who  would  fight  for  the  money  in  his 
pockets  when  he  got  back  to  Paris.  Beyond  this 
I  have  no  recollection  of  his  talk.  The  prospect 
before  him  apparently  absorbed  his  interest,  was 
the  only  good  he  had  got  out  of  his  visit  to  London. 
The  beauty  of  his  own  beautiful  poems,  I  felt  in 
disgust,  should  have  made  such  vicious  sordidness 
278 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

impossible.  It  revolted  me  that  a  man  so  de 
graded  and  hideous  physically  could  write  the 
verse  I  had  loved  ever  since  his  Romances  sans 
Paroles  first  fell  into  my  hands,  or,  writing  it, 
could  be  content  to  remain  what  he  was.  To  be 
sure,  the  genius  is  rare  whom  it  is  not  a  disap 
pointment  to  meet,  and  the  hero-worshipper  may 
be  thankful  when  his  great  man  is  guilty  of  noth 
ing  worse  than  the  famous  writer  in  Tchekhof  's 
play — so  famous  as  to  have  his  name  daily  in  the 
papers  and  his  photograph  in  shop  windows — 
whose  crime  was  to  condescend  to  fish  and  to  be 
pleased  when  he  caught  something. 

VI 

The  Nineties  would  not  let  us  off  from  another 
entertainment  as  characteristic — as  fin-de-siecle, 
the  Englishman  under  the  impression  that  he 
knew  his  Paris  would  have  classified  it — nor  did 
we  want  to  be  let  off,  though  it  lured  us  indoors. 

The  big  theatres  had  no  attraction :  to  sit  out 
a  long  play  in  a  hot  playhouse  was  not  our  idea 
of  what  spring  nights  were  made  for.  Neither 
had  the  " Hells "  and  " Heavens,"  the  fatuous, 
vulgar,  indecent  performances  with  catchpenny 
names,  run  for  the  foreigner  who  went  to  Paris 
so  that  he  might  for  the  rest  of  his  life  throw 

279 


NIGHTS 

up  hands  of  horror  and  say  what  an  immoral 
place  it  was. 

Once  or  twice  we  tried  the  out-door  Cafe- 
Chantant,  and  we  heard  Paulus  in  the  days  when 
all  Paris  went  to  hear  him,  and  Yvette  Guilbert 
when  she  was  still  slim  and  wore  the  V-shaped 
bodice  and  the  long  black  gloves,  as  you  may  see 
her  in  Toulouse-Lautrec's  lithographs. 

Once  or  twice  we  tried  the  big  stuffy  music- 
halls,  also  adapted  to  supply  the  travelling  stu 
dent  of  morals  with  the  specimens  he  was  in 
search  of,  but  not  dropping  all  local  character 
in  the  effort.  We  seemed  to  owe  it  to  the  memory 
of  Manet  to  go  to  the  Folies-Bergere  which  can 
not  be  forgotten  so  long  as  his  extraordinary 
painting  of  the  barmaid  in  the  ugly  fashions  of 
the  late  Seventies  is  saved  to  the  world.  That 
natural  desire  of  youth  just  to  see  and  to  know, 
that  had  carried  us  up  and  down  the  Boulevards 
of  the  Rive  Gauche  in  pursuit  of  its  poets,  sent 
us  to  the  Casino  de  Paris  and  the  Moulin  Rouge. 
But  a  first  visit  did  not  inspire  us  with  a  desire 
for  a  second,  though  I  would  not  have  missed  the 
Casino  if  only  for  the  imperishable  memory  of 
the  most  solemn  of  our  critics  dancing  there  with 
a  patroness  of  the  house  and  looking  about  as 
cheerful  as  a  martyr  at  the  stake,  nor  the  Moulin 
280 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

Rouge  for  another  memory  as  imperishable  of 
the  most  socially  pretentious  leaving  his  partner, 
after  his  dance,  with  the  " thanks  awfully"  of  the 
provincial  ballroom.  I  thought  both  dull  places 
which  nothing  save  their  reputation  could  have 
recommended,  even  to  those  determined  young 
decadents  in  London  who  were  no  prouder  of 
their  friendship  with  Bibi  and  Verlaine  than  of 
their  freedom  of  the  French  music-halls,  and  who 
wrote  of  them  with  a  pretence  of  profound  knowl 
edge  calculated  to  epater  le  bourgeois  at  home, 
referring  by  name  with  easy  familiarity  to  the 
dancers  in  the  Quadrille  Naturaliste,  as  cele 
brated  in  its  way  as  Bibi  in  his,  and  explaining 
solemnly  the  chahut  and  the  grand  ecart  and  le 
port  d'armes  and  every  evolution  in  that  un 
pleasant  dance.  How  it  brought  it  all  back  to 
me  the  other  day  when  I  found  in  The  Gypsy — 
the  direct  but  belated  offspring  of  The  Savoy — a 
poem  to  Nini-patte-en-Vair.  And  does  anybody 
now  know  or  care  who  Nini-patte-en-l'air  was? 
Or  who  La  Goulue  and  the  rest  ?  Would  anybody 
now  go  a  step  to  see  the  Quadrille  were  any  grace 
less  acrobats  left  to  dance  it?  These  things  be 
longed  to  the  lightest  of  light  fashions  that  passed 
with  the  Nineties,  and  the  Moulin  Rouge  itself 
could  burn  down  to  the  ground  a  few  months  ago 

281 


NIGHTS 

and  hardly  a  voice  be  heard  in  lament  or  reminis 
cence.  Upon  such  rapidly  shifting  sands  did  the 
young  would-be  revolutionaries  of  London  build 
their  House  of  Decadence. 

The  entertainment  worth  the  exchange  of  the 
pure  May  night  for  a  smoke-laden,  stuffy  in 
terior  was  in  none  of  these  places.  Where  we 
looked  for  it — and  found  it — was  in  the  little  cafe 
or  cabaret — the  cabaret  artistique  as  it  was  then 
known  in  Paris — with  a  flair  for  the  genius  the 
world  is  so  long  in  discovering,  where  the  young 
poet  read  his  verses,  the  young  musician  inter 
preted  his  music,  the  young  artist  showed  his 
work  in  any  manner  the  chance  was  given  him 
to,  to  say  nothing  of  the  posters  he  sometimes 
designed  for  it  and  decorated  Paris  with :  theatre 
and  performance  and  advertisement  impossible 
in  any  other  town  or  any  other  atmosphere.  Lon 
don  is  too  clumsy.  Berlin  is  too  ponderous,  New 
York  has  not  the  right  material  home-grown,  and 
the  spirit  of  the  original  dies  in  the  self-conscious 
imitation.  Even  in  Paris  a  Baedeker  star  is  its 
death-blow,  the  private  guide's  attention  spells 
immediate  ruin,  nor  can  it  survive  more  legiti 
mate  honours  at  home  when  they  come.  Like 
most  good  things  it  has  its  times  and  its  seasons, 
and  it  was  in  the  Nineties  it  gave  forth  its  finest 
282 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

blossoms.  We  knew  it  was  a  pleasure  to  be 
snatched  this  year,  for  next  who  could  say  where 
it  might  be,  and  we  set  out  to  snatch  it  with  the 
same  diligence  we  had  devoted  one  spring  to 
eating  dinners  and  another  to  playing  in  the 
suburbs,  though  we  could  make  no  pretence  in 
a  week  to  exhaust  it. 

Night  after  night  we  dined,  we  drank  our 
coffee  at  the  nearest  cafe,  we  scrambled  to  the 
top  of  the  big  omnibus  with  the  three  white 
horses,  now  as  dead  as  the  performance  it  was 
taking  us  to,  we  journeyed  across  Paris  to  see 
or  to  hear  the  work  of  the  young  genius  on  the 
threshold  of  fame  or  oblivion.  And  if  in  an 
access  of  conscientiousness  we  had  felt  the  need — 
as  we  never  did — of  a  reason  for  our  eagerness, 
we  might  have  had  it  in  the  way  our  evening's 
entertainment  invariably  turned  out  to  be  the 
legitimate  sequel  of  our  day's  work.  For  there 
wasn't  a  cabaret  of  them  all  that  did  not  reflect 
somehow  the  things  we  had  been  busy  studying 
and  wrangling  over  ever  since  otir  arrival  in 
Paris,  the  merit  they  shared  in  common  being 
their  pre-occupation  with  the  art  and  literature 
of  the  day  to  which  they  belonged.  The  tiresome 
performance  known  as  a  Revue,  which  is  all  the 
vogue  just  now  in  the  London  music-halls,  under- 

283 


NIGHTS 

takes  to  do  something  of  the  same  kind:  to  be, 
that  is,  a  reflection  of  the  events  and  interests  and 
popular  excitements  of  the  day.  But  the  wide 
gulf  between  the  music-hall  Revue  and  the  old 
Cabaret  performance  is  that  art  and  literature 
could  not,  by  hook  or  by  crook,  be  dragged  into 
the  average  Englishman's  scheme  of  life. 

If  one  night  the  end  of  the  journey  was  the 
Treteau  de  Tabarin — the  hot  and  uncomfortable 
little  room  rigged  up  as  a  theatre,  with  hard 
rough  wooden  benches  for  the  audience,  and 
vague  lights,  and  bare  and  dingy  stage  where 
men  and  women  whose  names  I  have  forgotten 
read  and  recited  and  sang  the  chansons  rosses 
that  "all  Paris"  flocked  there  to  hear — it  was  to 
have  the  argument  from  which  we  had  freshly 
come  continued  and  settled  by  one  of  the  inspired 
young  poets.  For  my  chief  remembrance  is  of 
the  irreverent  youth  who  summed  up  our  daily 
dispute  over  Rodin's  great  melodramatic  Balzac, 
with  frowning  brows  and  goitrous  throat, 
wrapped  in  shapeless  dressing-gown,  that  stood 
that  spring  in  the  centre  of  the  sculpture  court 
at  the  New  Salon,  and  the  summing  up  was  in 
verse  only  a  Frenchman  could  write,  the  satire 
the  more  bitter  because  the  wit  was  so  fine. 

A  second  night  when  we  climbed  the  lumber- 
284 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

ing  omnibus,  we  were  bound  for  the  Chat  Noir. 
It  had  already  moved  from  its  first  primitive 
quarters  but  had  not  yet  degenerated  into  a  regu 
lar  show  place,  advertised  in  Paris  and  taken  by 
Salis  on  tour  through  the  provinces.  Here,  our 
justification  was  to  find  that  everything,  from  the 
sign  of  the  Black  Cat,  then  hanging  at  the  door 
and  now  hanging,  a  national  possession,  in  the 
Carnavalet  Museum,  and  the  cat-decorations  in 
the  cafe  and  the  drawings  and  paintings  on  the 
wall,  to  the  performance  in  the  big  room  upstairs, 
was  by  the  men  over  whose  work  we  had  been 
arguing  all  day  at  the  Salon  and  buying  in  the 
reproductions  at  the  bookstalls  and  bookshops 
on  the  way  back. 

To  see  that  performance  upstairs  we  had  each 
to  pay  five  francs  at  the  door,  and  we  paid  them 
as  willingly  as  if  they  did  not  represent  break 
fast  and  dinner  for  the  next  day,  and  so  many 
other  people  paid  them  with  equal  willingness 
that  the  room  was  crowded,  though  the  show 
was  of  a  kind  that  the  same  public  in  any  town 
except  Paris  would  have  paid  twice  that  sum  to 
stay  away  from.  Imagine  Poe  attracting  cus 
tomers  for  a  New  York  saloon-keeper  by  reciting 
his  poems!  Imagine  Keene  or  Beardsley  mak 
ing  the  fortunes  of  a  London  public-house  by 

285 


NIGHTS 

decorating  its  walls  and  showing  his  pictures  on 
a  screen!  Or  imagine  the  public  of  to-day,  de 
bauched  by  the  "  mo  vies"  and  the  music-hall 
"sketch,"  knowing  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
poetry  or  art  to  listen  to  and  look  at ! 

But  Salis, — the  great  Salis,  inventor,  propri 
etor,  director  of  the  Chat  Noir,  dealt  only  in 
poetry  and  art  and  music,  and  this  is  sufficient  to 
give  him  a  place  in  the  history  of  the  period,  even 
if  he  were  the  mere  exploiter  filling  his  pockets 
by  pilfering  other  people's  brains  that  he  was 
accused  of  being  by  his  enemies.  He  crowded  his 
cafe  by  letting  poets  whom  nobody  had  heard  of 
and  whose  destiny — some  of  them,  Maurice  Don- 
nay  for  one — as  staid  Academicians  nobody 
could  have  foreseen,  try  their  verses  for  the  first 
time  in  public ;  by  giving  the  same  splendid  op 
portunity  to  musicians  as  obscure  then,  what 
ever  heights  at  least  two — Charpentier  and 
Debussy — were  afterwards  to  reach;  and  by 
allowing  the  artist,  while  the  poet  was  the  inter 
preter  in  beautiful  words  and  the  musician  in 
beautiful  sound,  to  show  his  wonderful  little 
dramas  in  black-and-white,  the  Ombres  Chinoises 
that  were  the  crowning  glory  of  the  night's  per 
formance.  From  days  in  the  Salons,  from  the 
illustrated  papers  and  magazines  and  books  we 
286 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

filled  our  bags  with  to  take  back  to  London,  we 
could  not  measure  the  full  powers  of  men  like 
Willette  and  Caran  d'Ache  and  Kiviere  and 
Louis  Morin  until  we  had  seen  also  The  Prodigal 
Son,  The  March  of  the  Stars,  and  all  the  stories 
they  told  in  those  dramatic  silhouettes — those 
marvellous  little  black  figures,  cut  in  tin,  only  a 
few  inches  high,  moving  across  a  white  space 
small  in  due  proportion,  but  so  designed  and 
posed  and  grouped  by  the  artist  as  to  give  the 
swing  and  the  movement  and  the  passing  of 
great  armies  until  one  could  almost  fancy  one 
heard  the  drums  beat  and  the  trumpets  call,  or  to 
suggest  the  grandeur  and  solemnity  of  the  desert, 
the  vastness  of  the  sky,  the  mystery  of  the  night. 
They  have  been  imitated.  Only  a  few  months 
ago  I  saw  an  imitation  in  a  London  music-hall, 
with  all  that  late  inventions  in  photography  and 
electric  light  could  do  for  it.  But  no  touch  of 
genius  was  in  the  little  figures  and  the  elaboration 
was  no  more  than  clever  stagecraft.  The  sim 
plicity  of  the  Chat  Noir  was  gone,  and  gone  the 
gaiety  of  the  performers,  and  the  pretence  of 
gaiety  is  sadder  than  tragedy.  Salis  knew  how 
to  catch  his  poet,  his  musician,  his  artist,  young, — 
that  is  where  he  scored. 

It  is  possible  that  I  was  the  more  impressed 

287 


NIGHTS 

by  the  beauty  of  the  show  because  it  was  not  of 
that  side  of  the  Chat  Noir  I  had  heard  most.  Its 
British  admirers  or  critics,  when  they  got  back 
to  London,  had  far  more  to  say  of  it  as  a  haunt 
of  vice,  if  not  as  decadents  to  parade  their  wide 
and  experienced  knowledge  of  Paris,  then  as  stu 
dents  who  had  gone  there  very  likely  to  gather 
further  confirmation  of  the  popular  British  be 
lief  in  Paris  as  the  headquarters  of  vice  and 
frivolity.  To  this  day  the  hero  or  heroine  of  the 
British  novel  who  is  led  astray  is  apt  to  cross  the 
Channel  for  the  purpose.  It  was  a  delicate  matter 
to  accomplish  this  in  the  Nineties  when  the  novel 
ist  happened  to  be  a  woman,  for  even  the  "New 
Woman"  cry,  if  it  armed  her  with  her  own  front 
door  key,  could  not  draw  all  the  bolts  and  bars 
of  convention  for  her.  I  can  remember  the  plight 
of  the  highly  correct  Englishwoman,  upon  whom 
British  fiction  depended  for  its  respectability, 
who  wanted  to  send  her  young  hero  from  the 
English  provinces  to  the  Chat  Noir  in  the  course 
of  a  rake's  progress,  and  who  avoided  facing  the 
contamination  herself  by  shifting  to  her  husband 
the  task  of  collecting  the  necessary  local  colour 
on  the  spot.  She  did  well,  for  had  she  gone  she 
could  not  have  been  so  scandalized  as  the  young 
Briton  in  her  book  was  obliged  to  be  for  the  sake 
288 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

of  the  story.  Those  who  had  eyes  and  ears  for  it 
could  see  and  hear  all  the  license  they  wanted, 
those  who  had  eyes  and  ears  for  the  beauty  could 
rest  content  with  that,  and  as  far  as  my  impres 
sion  of  the  place  goes,  Salis,  if  he  allowed  license 
at  the  Chat  Noir,  refused  to  put  up  with  either 
the  affectation  or  the  advertisement  of  it.  I  can 
not  forget  the  night  when  a  young  American 
woman  took  her  cigarette  case  from  her  pocket 
and  lit  a  cigarette.  It  would  not  have  seemed  a 
desperate  deed  in  proper  England  where  every 
other  woman  had  begun  to  smoke  in  public,  prob 
ably  more  in  public  than  in  private,  for  with 
many  smoking  was  part  of  the  "New  Woman" 
crusade — "I  never  liked  smoking,"  an  ardent 
leader  in  the  cause  told  me  once,  "but  I  smoked 
until  we  won  the  right  to."  France,  or  Salis, 
however,  still  drew  a  rigid  line  that  refused 
women  the  same  right  in  France,  and  with  the 
American's  first  whiff  he  was  bidding  her  good 
night  and  politely,  but  firmly,  showing  her  the 
door. 

A  third  night,  and  I  do  not  know  that  it  was 
not  the  most  amusing,  the  end  of  our  journey  was 
Bruant's  Cabaret  du  Mirliton,  in  the  remote 
Boulevard  Rochechouart.  I  daresay  there  was  not 
one  of  us  who  did  not  own  a  copy  of  Bruant's 
19  289 


NIGHTS 

Dans  la  Rue,  but  we  had  bought  it  less  because  of 
his  verses — some  of  us  had  not  read  a  line  of 
them — than  because  of  Steinlen's  illustrations, 
and  I  can  still  hear  Harland  upbraiding  us  for 
our  literary  indifference  and  urging  it  as  a  duty 
that  we  should  not  only  read  Bruant's  songs,  but 
go  at  once  to  hear  him  sing  them.  Harland  had 
the  provoking  talent  of  looking  as  if  his  stories 
were  the  last  thing  he  was  bothering  about,  as 
if  he  was  too  busy  enjoying  the  spectacle  of  life 
to  think  of  work,  when  he  was  really  working  as 
hard  as  the  hardest-working  of  us  all.  And  as  it 
was  not  very  long  after  that  his  Mademoiselle 
Miss  appeared,  I  have  an  idea  that  he  hurried  us 
off  to  Bruant's  not  solely  to  improve  our  literary 
taste,  but  quite  as  much  to  collect  incidents  for 
that  gay  little  tale. 

Bruant  ran  the  Mirliton  on  the  principle 
that  the  less  easily  pleasure  is  come  by,  the  more 
it  will  be  prized.  There  was  no  walking  in  as  at 
the  ordinary  cafe,  no  paying  for  admission  as 
upstairs  at  the  Chat  Noir.  Instead,  it  amused 
him  to  keep  people  who  wanted  to  get  in  stand 
ing  outside  his  door  while  he  examined  them 
through  a  little  grille,  an  amusement  which,  in 
our  case,  he  prolonged  until  I  was  sure  he  did  not 
like  our  looks  and  would  send  us  away,  and 
290 


Poster  by  Toulouse-Lautrec 

ARISTIDE  BRUANT 
OF  THE  CABARET  DU  MIRLITON 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

that  the  reason  was  the  responsibility  he  laid 
upon  us  all  for  the  frock  coat  and  top  hat  which 
the  Architect  could  never  manage  to  keep  out  of 
sight,  skulk  as  he  might  in  the  background.  But, 
of  course,  Bruant  had  no  intention  of  sending  us 
away  and  he  kept  up  his  little  farce  only  to  the 
point  where  our  disappointment  was  on  the  verge 
of  turning  into  impatience.  It  simply  meant  that 
he  did  not  hold  to  the  hail-fellow-well-met  f ree- 
and-easiness  which  was  the  pose  of  Salis  at  the 
Chat  Noir,  but,  at  the  Mirliton,  was  all  for  cere 
mony  and  dramatic  effect.  At  the  psychological 
moment  he  opened  the  door  himself,  a  splendid 
creature,  half  brigand,  half  Breton  peasant,  in 
brown  corduroy  jacket  and  knee-breeches,  high 
boots,  red  silk  handkerchief  tied  loosely  round  his 
neck,  big  wide-brimmed  hat  on  the  back  of  his 
head,  the  passing  pose  of  a  poet  who,  I  am  told, 
rejoiced  to  give  it  up  for  a  costume  fitted  to  the 
more  congenial  pastime  of  raising  potatoes.  To 
have  seen  Toulouse-Lautrec's  poster  of  him  and 
his  Cabaret  was  to  recognize  him  at  a  glance. 

To  the  noise  of  a  strident  chorus  in  choice 
argot,  which  I  was  told  I  should  be  thankful  I  did 
not  understand,  Bruant  showed  us  into  his  cafe. 
It  was  more  like  an  amateur  museum,  with  its 
big  Fifteenth  Century  fireplace,  and  its  brasses 

291 


NIGHTS 

and  tapestries  on  the  walls,  and  if  the  huge 
Mirliton  hanging  from  the  ceiling  was  not  re 
markable  as  a  work  of  art,  it  should  now,  as  his 
toric  symbol  of  the  Nineties,  have  a  place  at  the 
Carnavalet  by  the  side  of  the  sign  of  the  Chat 
Noir.  When  we  had  time  to  look  round,  we  saw 
that  the  severe  ordeal  through  which  we  had 
passed  had  admitted  us  into  the  company  of  a 
few  youths  in  the  high  stocks  and  long  hair  of 
the  Quartier  Latin,  a  petit  piou-piou  or  so,  two  or 
three  stray  workmen,  women  whom  perhaps  it 
would  be  more  discreet  not  to  attempt  to  classify, 
all  seated  at  little  tables  and  harmlessly  occupied 
in  drinking  beer  and  smoking  cigarettes.  The 
place  was  free  from  tourists,  we  were  the  only 
foreigners,  the  handsome  Aristide  evidently  sang 
his  songs  for  the  pleasure  of  himself  and  the 
people. 

It  was  after  we  had  sat  down  at  our  little  table 
and  given  the  order  required  of  us  that  the  in 
cidents  of  the  evening  began  to  play  so  neatly 
and  effectively  into  Harland's  plot.  A  scowl  was 
on  Bruant's  handsome  face  as  he  strode  up  and 
down  his  ca/6-museum,  for  the  striding,  it  seemed, 
was  only  part  of  the  regular  performance.  He 
should  at  the  same  time  have  been  singing  the 
songs  we  had  come  to  hear,  and  he  could  not  with- 
292 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

out  the  pianist  who  accompanied  him,  and  the 
pianist  had  chosen  this  night  of  all  others  to  be 
late.  The  scowl  deepened,  I  felt  something  like  a 
stir  of  uneasiness  through  the  room,  and  I  did 
not  wonder,  for  Bruant  looked  as  if  he  had  a 
temper  it  might  be  dangerous  to  trifle  with.  And 
then  the  strange  thing  happened  and,  to  our  sur 
prise  and  his,  our  party  whom  he  had  met  with 
such  disdain  saved  the  situation.  How  we  did  it 
may  be  read,  with  the  variations  necessary  to  fit 
his  tale,  in  Harland's  book.  We  had  our  own 
musician — her  name  was  not  Mademoiselle  Miss 
— and  when  she  discovered  what  was  the  matter, 
and  why  Bruant  was  scowling  so  abominably, 
she  was  moved  by  the  sympathy  of  one  artist  for 
another  and  offered  her  services.  Bruant  led  her 
to  the  piano,  she  accompanied  him  as  best  she 
could,  the  music  being  new  to  her,  he  sang  us  his 
St.  Lazare  and  La  Soularde,  all  the  while  striding 
up  and  down  with  magnificent  swagger,  and  was 
about  to  begin  a  third  of  his  most  famous  songs 
when  the  pianist  arrived,  his  unmistakable  fright 
quickly  lost  in  his  bewilderment  at  being  received 
with  an  amiability  he  had  not  any  right  to  expect, 
and  allowed  to  slip  into  his  place  at  the  piano 
unrebuked.  Bruant,  with  the  manners,  the  cour 
teous  dignity,  of  a  prince,  led  our  Mademoiselle 

293 


NIGHTS 

Miss  back  to  us,  ordered  bocks  for  her,  for  me — 
the  only  other  woman  at  our  table — and  for  him 
self,  touched  his  with  his  lips,  bowed,  was  gone 
and  singing  again  before  we  could  show  that  we 
had  not  yet  learned  to  drain  our  glasses  in  the 
fashion  approved  of  at  the  Mirliton. 

So  far  Harland  used  this  little  episode  much 
as  it  happened  and  made  the  most  of  it — I  hope 
the  curious  who  consult  his  story  will  be  able  to 
distinguish  between  his  realism  and  his  romance. 
But  being  mere  man  he  missed  the  sequel  which 
to  the  original  of  his  Mademoiselle  Miss  and  to 
me  was  the  most  dramatic  and  disturbing  event 
of  the  evening.  Gradually,  as  we  sat  at  our  table, 
watching  Bruant  and  the  company,  it  dawned 
upon  us  that  Bruant  did  not  exhaust  the  formal 
ities  of  his  entertainment  upon  the  coming  guest 
but  reserved  one  for  the  parting  guest  which  in 
our  judgment  was  scarcely  so  amusing.  For  to 
every  woman  who  left  his  cafe,  Bruant 's  good 
bye  was  a  hearty  kiss  on  both  cheeks.  We  had  the 
sense  to  know  that,  as  we  had  come  to  the  Mirliton 
of  our  own  free  will,  we  had  no  more  right  to 
quarrel  with  its  rules  than  to  refuse  to  show  our 
press  ticket  at  the  Salon  turnstile,  or  to  give  up 
our  umbrellas  at  the  door  of  the  Louvre,  or  to 
question  the  regulations  of  any  other  place  in 
294 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

Paris  we  chose  to  go  to.  If  we  insisted  upon  being 
made  the  exceptions  to  the  farewell  ceremony, 
and  if  Bruant  would  not  let  us  off,  could  we  resent 
it?  And  if  the  men  of  our  party  resented  it  for 
us,  and  if  Bruant  resented  their  resentment,  how 
would  that  improve  matters  ? 

It  was  about  as  unpleasant  a  predicament  as 
I  have  ever  found  myself  in.  We  talked  it  over, 
but  could  see  no  way  out  of  it,  and  in  our  dis 
comfort  kept  urging  the  men  to  stay  for  just  one 
more  song  and  then  just  one  more,  greatly  to 
their  amazement,  for  they  were  accustomed  to 
not  wanting  to  go  and  having  to  beg  us  to  stay. 
The  evil  moment,  however,  could  not  be  put  off 
indefinitely,  and,  with  our  hearts  in  our  boots, 
we  at  last  got  up  from  the  table.  We  might  have 
spared  ourselves  our  agony.  Bruant,  with  the 
instinct  and  intelligence  of  the  Frenchman, 
realized  our  embarrassment  and  I  hope  I  am 
right  in  thinking  he  had  his  laugh  over  us  all  to 
himself,  so  much  more  than  a  laugh  did  we  owe 
him.  For  what  he  did  when  we  got  to  the  door 
was  to  shake  hands  with  us  ceremoniously,  each 
in  turn,  to  repeat  his  thanks  for  our  visit  and  his 
gratitude  to  the  musician  for  her  services,  to  take 
off  his  wide-brimmed  hat — the  only  time  that 

295 


NIGHTS 

night — and  to  bow  us  out  into  the  darkness  of 
the  Boulevard  Rochechouart. 

Following  the  example  of  Mademoiselle  Miss 
in  the  story,  unless  it  was  she  who  was  following 
ours,  we  finished  the  evening  which  had  begun  at 
the  Mirliton  by  eating  supper  at  the  Bat  Mort. 
It  was  an  experience  I  cared  less  to  repeat  even 
than  the  visits  to  the  Casino  de  Paris  and  the 
Moulin  Rouge.  As  light  and  satisfying  a  supper 
could  have  been  eaten  in  many  other  places,  late 
as  was  the  hour.  Neither  wit  nor  art  entered  into 
the  entertainment  as  at  the  Chat  Noir  and 
Bruant's.  Vice  was  at  no  trouble  to  disguise  it 
self.  On  the  contrary,  it  made  rather  a  cynical 
display,  I  thought,  and  cynicism  in  vice  is  never 
agreeable.  I  give  my  impressions.  I  may  be 
wrong.  I  have  not  forgotten  that  the  harmless 
portrait  by  Degas  of  Desboutin  at  the  Nouvelle 
Athenes  scandalized  all  London  in  the  Nineties. 
Everything  depends  on  the  point  of  view. 

Anyway,  another  adventure  I  liked  better  was 
still  to  come  before  that  long  Paris  night  was  at 
an  end.  It  was  so  characteristic  of  Harland  and 
his  joy  in  the  humorous  and  the  absurd  that  I  do 
not  quite  see  why  he  did  not  let  his  Mademoiselle 
Miss  share  it.  Outside  the  Rat  Mort,  in  the  early 
hours  of  the  next  morning,  we  picked  up  an  old- 
296 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

fashioned  one-horse,  closed  cab,  built  to  hold  two 
people,  and  of  a  type  almost  as  extinct  in  Paris 
as  the  three-horse  omnibus.  It  was  the  only  cab 
in  sight  and  we  packed  into  and  outside  of  it,  not 
two  but  eight.  As  it  crawled  down  one  of  the 
steep  streets  from  Montmartre  there  was  a  creak, 
the  horse  stopped  and,  as  quickly  as  I  tell  it,  the 
bottom  was  out  of  the  cab  and  we  were  in  the 
street.  Harland,  as  if  prepared  all  along  for  just 
such  a  disaster,  whisked  the  top  hat  so  conspicu 
ous  in  everything  we  did  from  the  astonished 
Architect's  head,  handed  it  round,  made  a  pitiful 
tale  of  le  pauvr'  cocker  and  his  hungry  wife  and 
children,  and  implored  us  to  show,  now  or  never, 
the  charitable  stuff  we  were  made  of.  Consider 
ing  it  was  the  end  of  a  long  evening,  he  collected 
a  fairly  decent  number  of  francs  and  presented 
them  to  the  cocker  with  an  eloquent  speech,  which 
it  was  a  pity  someone  could  not  have  taken 
down  in  shorthand  for  him  to  use  in  his  next 
story.  The  cocker,  the  least  concerned  of  the 
group,  thanked  us  with  a  broad  grin,  drew  up  his 
broken  cab  close  to  the  sidewalk,  took  the  horse 
from  the  shaft,  clambered  on  its  back,  rode  as 
fast  as  he  could  go  down  the  street,  and  disap 
peared  into  the  night.  A  sergent-de-ville,  who 
had  been  looking  on,  shrugged  his  shoulders ;  in 

297 


NIGHTS 

his  opinion,  cet  animal  la  was  in  luck  and  prob 
ably  would  like  nothing  better  than  the  same 
accident  every  night,  provided  at  the  time  he  was 
driving  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  such  generosity. 
Allez!  Didn't  we  know  the  cab  was  heavily  in 
sured,  all  Paris  cabs  were,  we  had  made  him  a 
handsome  present — Voild  tout! 

And  so  wonderful  is  it  to  be  young  and  in 
Paris  that  we  laughed  our  way  back  as  we 
trudged  on  foot  through  the  now  dark  and  empty 
and  silent  streets  between  Montmartre  and  our 
rooms.  I  doubt  if  I  could  laugh  now  at  the 
fatigue  of  it.  Of  all  the  many  ghosts  that  walk 
with  me  along  the  old  familiar  ways,  the  one 
keeping  most  obstinately  at  my  side  is  that  of 
my  own  youth,  reminding  me  of  the  prosaic, 
elderly  woman  I  am,  who,  even  if  the  zest  for 
adventure  remained,  would  be  ashamed  to  be 
caught  plunging  into  follies  like  those  of  the  old 
foolish  nights  in  Paris  that  never  can  be  again, 
or  who,  if  not  ashamed,  would  be  without  the 
energy  to  see  them  through  to  the  end. 

VII 

In  Paris,  as  in  London,  a  further  ramble  down 
those  crowded,  haunted,  resounding  Corridors  of 
Time  would  lead  me  to  many  other  nights  of 
298 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

gaiety  and  friendliness  and  loud  persistent  talk. 
Again,  I  would  have  my  Whistler  nights,  the 
background  now  not  our  chambers,  but  the  mem 
orable  apartment  in  the  Rue  du  Bac  rez-de- 
chaussee  opening  upon  the  spacious  garden 
where,  in  the  twilight,  often  we  lingered  to  listen 
to  the  Missionary  Monks  in  their  spacious  garden 
on  the  other  side  of  the  wall,  singing  the  canticles 
for  the  Month  of  Mary  so  dear  to  me  from  my 
convent  days — nights  in  the  dining-room  with  its 
beautiful  blue-and-white  china,  the  long  table  and 
the  Japanese  "  something  like  a  birdcage "  hang 
ing  over  it  in  the  centre,  many  once-friendly  faces 
all  about  me,  Whistler  presiding  in  his  place  or 
filling  the  glasses  of  his  guests  as  he  passed  from 
one  to  the  other,  always  talking,  saying  things 
as  nobody  else  could  have  said  them,  witty,  seri 
ous,  exasperating,  delightful  things,  laughing  the 
gay  laugh  or  the  laugh  of  malice  that  said  as 
much  as  his  words ; — nights  in  the  blue  and  white 
drawing-room,  with  the  painting  of  Venus  over 
the  mantel,  and  the  stately  Empire  chairs,  and 
the  table  a  litter  of  papers  among  which  was 
always  the  last  correspondence  to  be  read,  inter 
rupted  by  his  own  comments  that  to  those  who 
heard  were  the  best  part  of  it — nights  that  will 
never  perish  as  long  as  even  one  man,  or  woman, 

299 


NIGHTS 

who  shared  in  them  lives  to  remember ; — Whistler 
nights  even  after  Whistler  had  left  us  for  the 
land  where  there  is  neither  night  nor  day :  nights 
these  with  the  old  friends  who  had  loved  him, 
with  the  painter  Oulevey  and  the  sculptor  Drouet 
who  had  been  his  fellow  students,  with  Theodore 
Duret  who  had  been  faithful  during  his  years  of 
greatest  trial,  friends  who  rejoiced  in  talking  of 
Whistler  and  of  all  that  had  gone  to  make  him 
the  great  personality  and  the  greater  artist ;  but 
of  the  Whistler  nights  in  Paris,  as  in  London,  I 
have  already  made  the  record  with  J.  The  story 
of  them  is  told. 

And  along  the  same  rich  Corridors,  I  would 
come  to  nights  only  less  worth  preserving  in  the 
studios  of  artists,  American  and  English,  who 
studied  and  worked  and  lived  in  Paris — nights 
that  have  bequeathed  to  me  the  impression  of 
great  space,  and  lofty  ceilings,  and  many  can 
vases,  and  big  easels,  and  bits  of  tapestry,  and 
the  gleam  of  old  brass  and  pottery,  and  excellent 
dinners,  and,  of  course,  vehement  talk,  and  a 
friendly  war  of  words — nights  with  men  irrev 
ocably  in  the  movement,  whose  work  was  con 
spicuous  on  the  walls  of  the  New  Salon  and  had 
probably,  a  few  hours  earlier,  kept  us  busy  argu 
ing  in  front  of  it  and  writing  voluminous  notes 
300 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

in  our  note-books — nights  not  the  least  stirring 
and  tempestuous  of  the  many  I  have  spent  in 
Paris,  but  nights  of  which  my  safe  rule  of  silence 
where  the  living  are  concerned  forbids  me  to  tell 
the  tale. 

And  one  special  year  stands  out  when  the 
little  hotel  in  the  Rue  St.  Roch  was  deserted  for 
the  Grand  Hotel,  and  when  all  the  nights  seemed 
swallowed  up  in  the  International  Society's  busi 
ness — not  the  International  Society  of  Anar 
chists,  but  the  International  Society  of  Sculp 
tors,  Painters,  and  Gravers  in  London,  which,  in 
those  terribly  enterprising  Nineties,  sent  its 
deputation — J.  included  in  it — to  collect  all  that 
was  most  individual  and  distinguished  in  the 
Salons  for  its  next  Exhibition.  It  was  a  year  of 
many  wanderings  in  many  directions  to  many 
studios  of  French  artists,  or  foreign  artists  work 
ing  in  Paris — a  year  of  many  meetings  of  many 
artists  night  after  night.  But  this  clearly  is  not 
a  story  for  me  to  tell,  since  the  International  was 
J.'s  concern,  not  mine.  In  the  hours  away  from 
my  work  I  looked  on,  an  outsider,  but  an  amused 
outsider,  marvelling  as  I  have  never  ceased  to 
marvel  since  the  faraway  nights  in  Rome,  at  the 
inexhaustible  wealth  of  art  as  a  subject  of  talk 
wherever  artists  are  gathered  together. 

301 


NIGHTS 

And  rambling  still  further  into  that  past,  I 
would  stumble  into  American  nights — nights  with 
old  friends,  established  there  or  passing  through 
and  run  across  by  chance — nights  of  joy  in  being 
with  my  own  people  again,  of  hearing  not  Eng 
lish,  but  my  native  tongue  and  having  life  re 
adjusted  to  the  American  point  of  view.  No 
body  knows  how  good  it  is  to  be  with  one 's  fellow- 
countrymen  who  has  not  been  years  away  from 
them.  But  these  also  are  nights  that  come  within 
the  forbidden  zone — the  zone  where  Silence  is 
Golden. 

VIII 

I  have  put  down  these  memories  of  Paris 
nights  and  my  yearly  visit  to  Paris  in  the  year 
when,  for  the  first  time  since  I  began  my  work  in 
its  galleries,  no  Salon  has  opened  to  take  me  there 
in  the  springtime.  With  the  coming  of  May  the 
lilacs  and  horse-chestnuts  bloomed  with  the  old 
beauty  and  fragrance  along  the  Champs-Ely  sees 
outside  the  Grand  Palais,  but  inside  no  prints 
and  paintings  were  on  the  walls,  no  statues  in 
the  great  courts.  To  those  admitted,  the  only 
exhibition  was  of  the  wounded,  the  maimed,  the 
dying.  Does  it  mean,  I  wonder,  the  end  of  all 
old  days  and  nights  for  me  in  Paris,  as  the  war 
that  has  shut  fast  the  Salon  door  means  the  end 
302 


NIGHTS:   IN  PARIS 

of  the  old  order  of  things  in  the  Europe  I  have 
known?  Shall  I  never  go  to  Paris  again  in  the 
season  of  lilacs  and  horse-chestnuts  ?  Already  I 
have  ceased  to  meet  my  old  friends  by  day  in 
front  of  the  picture  of  the  year  and  to  quarrel 
with  them  over  it  by  night  at  a  cafe  table,  or  in 
the  peaceful  twilight  of  the  suburban  town  and 
park  and  garden.  Am  I  to  lose  as  well  the  link 
with  the  past  I  had  in  the  Salon,  am  I  to  lose  per 
haps  Paris  ?  Who  can  say  at  the  moment  of  my 
writing,  when  the  echo  of  shells  and  bullets  is 
thundering  in  my  ears'?  The  pleasure  of  what 
has  been  becomes  the  dearer  possession  in  the 
mad  upheaval  that  threatens  to  sweep  all  trace 
of  it  away,  and  so  I  cling  to  the  remembrance  of 
my  Paris  nights  the  more  tenderly  and  even 
with  the  hope,  if  far-fetched,  that  others  may 
understand  the  tenderness.  Youth  sees  little  be 
yond  youth,  but  as  the  years  go  on  I  begin  to 
believe  youth  exists  for  no  other  end  than  to 
supply  the  incidents  that  age  transforms  into 
memories  to  warm  itself  by.  If  I  have  reached 
the  time  for  looking  back,  I  have  my  compensa 
tion  in  the  invigorating  glow,  for  all  its  sadness, 
that  I  get  from  my  new  occupation. 


% 


INDEX 


ABBEY,  Edwin  A.,  54 
Addiscombe,  Henley's  house 

at,  137,  145,  149 
' '  Admiral      Guinea, ' '      by 

Henley,  147 
Albano,  66 

Albergo  del  Sole,  Pompeii,  67 
"Allahakbarries,"  214,  215 
Aman-Jean,  E.,  261 
American  Consul  at  Venice, 

86 

American  tourists,  91 
American  visitors,  221 
Anthony,  Venice,  97 
Antica  Panada,  76 
"Arabian     Nights'     Enter 
tainment,"     by     Henley, 
132 

Arnold,  at  Venice,  86,  87 
"Arrangement     in      Trou 
sers,"  96 
Arrested,  29 

Art  critics  in  Paris,  227-229 
Artists  in  Rome,  44-64 
"Art  Journal,"  London,  129 
"Art     Weekly,"     London, 

202 

"Association  Books,"  214 
Astor,     William     Waldorf, 

152,  153 

"Atlantic  Monthly,"  83,  96 
Augustine    (Mme.    Bertin), 

218 

Austen,  Louis,  174 
20 


BALLANTYNE  &  Co.,  125 

Barnes,  Henley's  house  at, 
149 

Barrie,  J.  M.,  148,  214 

Baseball,  87,  88 

Bauer's,  at  Venice,  107 

Beardsley,  Aubrey,  138, 177- 
191, 197,  211,  228,  260-264 

Beardsley 's  illness,  190 

Beaux-Arts,  Paris,  47 

Beerbohm,  Max,  185,  187 

Befana  Night,  66 

Beggarstaff  Brothers,  194 

Belgian  exiles,  222 

Belgium,  17 

Beraud,  Jean,  239 

Bibi-la-Puree,  276,  281 

Bicycle,  17,  32,  254 

Bisbing,  Henry  S.,  102 

Black  magic,  89 

Black  and  white  at  the  Sa 
lons,  239 

Blackburn,  Vernon,  152 

Blakie,  W.  B.,  148 

Blanche,  J.  E.,  261 

"Blast,  The,"  176 

"Bodley  Head,  "187 

Boer  War,  219 

Borghese,  The,  29 

"Boys,  The,  "at  Venice,  84, 
88,  93,  95,  96,  102 

Breton,  Jules,  274 

Bridge  of  Sighs,  Venice,  75 

Brillat-Savarin,  245 

British  Museum,  65 

305 


INDEX 


Bronsons,  the,  at  Venice,  98 
Brown,  Horatio,  at  Venice,  98 
Brown,  Professor  Fred,  203 
Bniant,  Aristide,  289-295 
Buckingham      Street,      our 
rooms  in,   117,   121,   125, 
126,    129-223,    142,    158, 
161,    172,   174,    179,   199, 
220,  260 

Buhot,  Felix,  120,  199,  203 
Bunney  at  Venice,  92 
Burano,  111 
Burlington  House,  228 
Burly,   Stevenson's,   134 
Burne-Jones,    Sir    Edward, 

178 

Bussy,  Simon,  127 
"  Butterfly/ '  the,  177,  198 

CABARET  du  Mirliton,  Paris, 

289,  295 
Lyonnais,     Paris,     252, 

254 

Cafe  d'Harcourt,  Paris,  273 
de  la  Paix,  Paris,  273 
de    la   Regence,    Paris, 

273 

de  Venise,  Rome,  41 
Nazionale      A  r  a  g  n  o, 

Rome,  41,  43,  49,  52, 

67,  121,  274 
Orientale,    Venice,    76, 

82-97,  107,  113,  121, 

274 
Royal,  London,  121, 176, 

208 

306 


Cafes  at  Rome,  34,  40-44 

at  Venice,  76-113 
Calcino,  Venice,  77 
Campagna,  the,  33,  35,  65 
Campanile,  the,  Venice,  75 
Canaletto,  100 
"Captain's  Girl,"  214 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  54 
Carnavalet    Museum,     285, 

292 

Carolus-Duran,  261 
Carpaccio,  94 
Casa  Kirsch,  Venice,  73,  74, 

75,77 

Casino  de  Paris,  280,  296 
Cavour,  the,  Rome,  38,  43 
Cazin,  C.,  262 
Cezanne,  Paul,  248,  249 
Chamberlain,  Dr.,  62 
Champ  de  Mars,  234 
Champs-Elysees,    227,    243, 

302 

Chantrey  bequest,  119 
Charles  V  ball,  at  Munich, 

105 

Charpentier,  E.,  286 
Chat  Noir,  the,  Paris,  285- 

291 

Cheret,  Jules,  240 
Cheshire   Cheese,  the,  Lon 
don,  38 
Chioggia,  111 
1 '  Chronicle  of  Friendships, ' ' 

by  Will  Low,  165 
Church  of  San  Giorgio  degli 

Schiaroni,  Venice,  94 


INDEX 


Cleopatra's  Needle,  147 
Clothes,   31-32,  44,   57,  76, 

98,  123,  185,  193-194,  207, 

255,  260,  261 
Cole,  Timothy,  221 
Coleman  at  Rome,  61 
Conder,  Charles,  203,  241 
Coney  Island,  110 
Constable,  T.  and  A.,  213 
Cook,  Clarence,  63 
Cookery,       the       Author 's 

articles  on,  142,  149,  158, 

186 

Cooking  books,  245 
Corder,  Rosa,  237 
Cornford,  Cope,  128 
' '  Courrier  Francais, ' '  Paris, 

203 

Covent  Garden,  125 
Crane,  Walter,  138,  204 
Crawford,  Marion,  60 
Crockett,  S.  R.,  157 
Cubists,  the,  248 
Cust,  Henry,  153 

D'ACHE,  Caran,  240,  287 
"  Daily      Chronicle,"      the, 

London,  170,  173,  174 
"Daily  News,"  London,  41 
Davies,  59,  112 
Dayrolles,   Adrienne    (Mrs. 

W.  J.  Fisher) ,  174 
Debussy,     Achille     Claude, 

286 

Degas,  H.  G.  E.,  119,  296 
Desboutin,  296 
"Dial,  The, "London,  177 


Dinners  in  Paris,  244-247 
"Diogenes  of  London,"  215 
Discussions  over  art,  46-65 
Dodge,  Miss  Louise,  65,  159 
"Dome,"  the,  London,  177 
Donnay,  Maurice,  286 
Donoghue  the  sculptor,  48- 

49,  50,  53 

Dowie,  Menie  Muriel,  185 
Drouet,  C.,  300 
Ducal    Palace,    Venice,    75, 

100 

Duclaux,  Madame,  129 
Dumas 's  Dictionnaire  de  la 

Cuisine,  149,  245 
Duret,  Theodore,  300 
Duveneck,  Frank,  76-108 

EDELFELT,  239 
Eighteen-eighties,  27-114 
Eighteen-nineties,   115-304 
Their    so-called    decad 
ence,  118 

English  tourists,  92 
Etty,  William,  123 
"Evergreen,"  the,  London, 
177 

FALCONE,  the,  Rome,  37,  38, 

43 

Fig-Tree  House,  130 
Fighting  nineties,  118 
Finck,  Henry  T.,  245 
"Finsbury,   Michael,"   131, 

132 

Fisher,  W.  J.,  174 
Fitzgerald,   Edward,   62 

307 


INDEX 


Flaubert,  Gustave,  173 
Florence,  29,  74,  84,  97 
Florian's,  Venice,  77,  82,  99 
Florizel,    Prince,    163,    168, 

173,  232 

Folies-Bergere,  Paris,  280 
Fontainebleau,     Forest     of, 

271 

Forain,  203,  240 
"Forepaugh,"  52-56,  89 
Frederic,  Haiold,  156,  214, 

215 
Furse,  Charles  W.,  200,  201, 

211,  228,  269,  270 
Futurists,  the,  248 

GARNETT,  Dr.  Edward,  65 

Gauguin,  249 

Gautier,  Theophile,  268 

Gavarni,  257 

" Gazette,  Pall  Mall,"  153 

"  Gentle  Art  of  Making  Ene 
mies,  The,"  85,  217 

"Germ,  The,"  176 

German  tourists,  77,  270 

Germany,  17 

Ghetto,  Rome,  30 

Gigi,  53 

Gosse,  Edmund,  174,  188 

Goupil  Gallery,  London,  119 

Graefe,  Meier,  204 

'Grahame,  Kenneth,  148, 185, 
213 

Grand  Palais,  Paris,  302 

"Graphic,"  the,  London, 
203 

308 


Great  College  Street  office, 
Henley's,  130-137,  139, 
149 

"Greedy  Autolycus,"  186, 
254 

Guardi,  100 

Guilbert,  Yvette,  280 

"Gypsy,  The, "176,  281 

HAMEBTON,   Philip    Gilbert, 

188 
Hamilton,   Lord   Frederick, 

153 
Harland,  Henry,  160,  172- 

177,    197,   211,   228,   257, 

258,   264,   265,   266,  290- 

294,  297 

Harrison,  Alexander,  250 
Harte,  Bret,  51 
Hartrick  and  Sullivan,  196, 

198,  222 

Henley,  Madge,  214 
Henley,  William  Ernest,  118, 

125-149,    163,    166,    196, 

197,  211,  213,  240 
Henley's     "Young     Men," 

125,    133,    134,   142,   145, 

149,    150,    176,    179,    196, 

213,  214 

Hill,  L.  Raven,  198 
Hobbes,  John  Oliver   (Mrs. 

Cragie),  185 
"Hobby-horse,"  the,  176 
Home,  Herbert  P.,  278 
"Hospital  Verses,"  126,  147 
Hostess,  author  as,  126,  198 


INDEX 


Hotel  de  I'Univers  et  Portu 
gal,  Paris,  233 
d 'Italic,    London,    185, 

187 
Howells,  William  Dean,  83, 

109 

Hueffer,  Ford  Madox,  209 
Hugo,  Victor,  268 
Hunt,  Holman,  204,  239 
Hunt,  Violet,  158 
Huysmans,  Joris  Karl,   89, 
238 

IBSEN,  199,  251 
Impressionism,  238 
Indolence,    22,    60,    84,    86, 

108,  112,  122 

' 'Inland  Voyage,  An,"  165 
International  Exhibitions,  19 
International      Society      of 

Sculptors,    Painters,    and 

Gravers,  301 
Italian  Primitives,  204 
Italy,  17,  29 
Iwan-Muller,  154,  211 

"J— "  (Joseph  Pennell), 
13,  20,  24,  29,  40,  44,  45, 
53,  73,  81,  85,  91,  98,  108, 
113,  117,  120,  121,  122, 
129,  130,  137,  154,  161, 
174,  178,  179,  184,  204, 
205,  210,  214,  217,  227, 
228,  245,  254,  301 

James,  Henry,  188 

Japanese  art,  178 

Jobbins,  90,  95,  111 

Journalism,  19, 117,  228-229 


Journeyings  in  Europe,  15- 
19 

KELLY,  FitzMaurice,  148 
Kelmscott  Press,  178,  213 
Kennedy,  E.  G.,  218,  219 
Kensington    Gardens,    Lon 
don,  52,  176 
Khayyam,  Omar,  62,  63 
Khnopf,  240 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  148,  213 
Kitchener,  Lord,  155 

LA  Perouse,  Paris,  247 
Lagoon,  the,  Venice,  77,  107, 

111,  112 

Lamb,  Charles,  22 
"Land  of  the  Dollar,"  215 
Lane,  John,  185,  187 
Lang,  Andrew,  41,  63 
' '  Lantern    Bearers,     The, ' ' 

165,  173 

Latin  Quarter,  194 
Lavenue's,  Paris,  249 
Le  Puy,  18 
Legge,  James  G.,  159 
Legrand,  Louis,  203,  240 
Leighton,  Lord,  195 
Leland,  Charles  Godfrey,  20, 

56 

Lhermitte,  239 
Lido,  the,  76,  88, 112 
London,  38,  115-223,  253 
' l  London     Impressionists, ' ' 

199 
"London  Voluntaries,"  by 

Henley,  147 
Low,  Will,  165 

309 


INDEX 


Lucca,  74 

Luska,  Sydney  (Henry  Har- 

land),173 
Luxembourg,  Paris,  103 

MACCOLL,  D.  S.,  201,  227,  241 
1  'Mademoiselle   Miss,"  290, 

294,  296 

''Magazine    of   Art,"    Lon 
don,  129 

Manet,  Edouard,  249,  280 
Margherita,  Queen,  66 
Marguery's,  Paris,  250 
Marino,  66 

Marriott  -  Watson,         Rosa 
mund,  157 

Martin,  at  Venice,  86 
May,  Phil,  191-199,  211,  222 
McFarlane,  Venice,  97,  98, 

100,  106,  107 
Meissonier,  J.  L.  E.,  236 
Merceria,  the,  Venice,  99 
Meynell,  Mrs.  Alice,  158, 159 
Millet,  F.  D.,  54 
Mistral,  65 

Mitchell,  Dr.  S.  Weir,  142 
Monet,  Claude,  238 
Montepulciano,  42 
Montmartre,  297 
Moore,  George,  159, 185,  215, 

229 

Morelli,  46 
Morin,  Louis,  287 
Morris,  William,  209 
Morrison,  Arthur,  148,  213 
"Morte     d' Arthur,"     illus 
trated  by  Beardsley,  178 
Moulin  Rouge,  280,  281,  296 

310 


Munich,  84,  97,  98,  102 

Accident  at  ball,  105 
Murano,  111 
Miirger,  Henri,  257 
Music  of ' '  Carmen, ' '  the,  106 

NAPLES,  66,  67,  74,  110 
"Nation,"  the,  London,  228, 

229 

"National  Observer,"  Lon 
don,  125,128,130,135,136, 
137,  138,  141,  151,  155, 
157,  211,  214,  229,  267 
New  English  Art  Club,  Lon 
don,  119,  199,  200,  201, 
269 

New  Gallery,  227 
New  York  "Times,"  156 
Nicholson,  William,  127, 128, 

194 

Norman,  Henry,  159 
Norwegian  at  Rome,  the,  60 
Nouvelle  Athenes,  the,  Paris, 
249 

' '  OBSERVATIONS  in  Phil- 
istia,"  by  Harold  Fred 
eric,  156 

Orvieto,  74 

Ostia,  66 

Oulevey,  H.,  300 

' '  PAGEANT,  ' '  the,  London, 
177 

Palais  Royal,  243 

Pall-Mall,  the,  "Budget," 
"Gazette"  and  "Maga 
zine,"  142,  149,  152,  155, 
161,  186,  227,  254 


INDEX 


"Pan,"  London,  204 

Panada,  the,  Venice,  78-82 

Paris,  19,  227-303 
Studios,  102-103 

"Parson  and  the  Painter, 
The,"  197 

Parsons,  Harold,  152 

Paulus,  280 

"Penn,  William,"  123,  157, 
185 

Philadelphia,  13,  23,  34,  37, 
40,  50,  64,  137,  242,  255 

Piazza  Navona,  Rome,  66 

"Pick-me-up,  "198 

Pincian,  the,  Eome,  33,  59 

Pisa,  74 

Pistoia,  74 

Pointillism,  238 

Pollock,  Wilfred,  152 

Pompeii,  67 

Porta  del  Popolo,  Rome,  29 

"Portfolio,  The,"  59 

Posta,  the,  Rome,  43 

Post-impressionism,  204,  248 

Pre-Raphaelitism,  204,  207 

Preston,  Miss  Harriet 
Waters,  65,  159 

"Private  Life  of  the  Ro 
mans,"  65 

Prunier's,  Paris,  252 

Pryde,  James,  194 

Pulcinello,  67-69 

"Punch,"  213 

"RAPE  of  the  Lock,"  illus 
trated  by  Beardsley,  182, 
213 

Rat  Mort,  Paris,  296 


Renouard,  Paul,  203 
"Return     of     the     O 'Ma- 
honey,"  215 

Reyniere,  Grimod  de  la,  245 
Rico,  100 
Riviere,  287 

Robinson,  Miss  Mary,  129 
Rocca  di  Papa,  66 
Rodin,    Auguste,    128,  340, 

271,  284 

Rome,  27-69,  121 
Rooms  at  Rome,  33-34,  64 
Roque,  Jules,  203 
Rosicrucianism,  238 
Ross,  Robert,  182 
Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  207, 

209 
Rossetti,   William    Michael, 

209 
Royal  Academy,  77, 119,  200, 

212,  227,  232 
Rubaiyat,      illustrated      by 

Vedder,  62 
Rubens,  101, 108 
Ruskin,  John,  46,  73,  77,  92, 

94,  99,  100,  102,  110 
Ruskin,    never    quoted    by 

artists,  92 

SAILING  for  Europe,  14 
Salis,  285,  286,  287,  289,  291 
Salisbury,  Lord,  165 
"Salome,"     illustrated     by 

Beardsley,  213 
Salons,  the,  Paris,  103 
Sandro,  42,  43 
Sandys,  Frederick,  121,  204- 

208 

311 


INDEX 


San    Francisco    Exposition, 

84,  97 

San  Giorgio,  Venice,  75,  82 
San  Peladan,  238 
' '  Saturday    Review, ' '    Lon 
don,  202 
"Savoy,  The, "189, 190, 198, 

281 

Schwabe,  Carlos,  239 
"Scots     Observer,"     Edin 
burgh,  129 
Shannon,  J.  J.,  193 
Shaw,  George  Bernard,  159, 

215 

Shinn,  at  Venice,  86 
Sickert,  Walter,  201 
Simpson 's,  London,  253 
Sisley,  Alfred,  238 
Sixties,  illustrations  of  the, 

205,  206,  208 

Societies  in  the  nineties,  134 
Solferino's,  London,  232,  233 
South  Kensington,  London, 

58,  90 
"Speaker,    The,"    London, 

229 
"Spectator,"  London,   202, 

227 
"Spring-heeled  Jack,"  160, 

164 

Spring  in  Venice,  108 
"Standard,"    London,    83, 

98 
St.  Cloud,  Paris,  258,  259, 

263 

Steer,  Wilson,  203 
Steevens,    George   W.,    154, 

211,  213,  215 


Steinlen,  240,  290 
Stennis  Brothers,  165 
Stevenson,   "Bob"    (Robert 

Alan  Mowbray),  160,  162, 

170,    173,   197,   211,   227, 

233,    237,    249,    250,    262 
Stevenson,     Robert     Louis, 

127,   128,    136,   146,   160, 

163,   164,   167,   181,    249, 

250,  263 

Stewarts,  London,  232 
St.  Mark's,  Venice,  75,  86, 

100, 109 

St.  Paul's,  London,  147 
Street,  George  S.,  148,  213 
' '  Strike       at      Arlingf  ord, 

The,"  215 
Stuart,  Jack,  152 
"Studio,  The,"  178 
Symbolism,  238 
Symonds,  John*  Addington, 

77 
Symons,   Arthur,   183,   190, 

278 

"TALK  and  Talkers,"  160 
Talk   on    Thursday   nights, 

124-125 

Thaulow,  Fritz,  273 
Theatre  Francois,  220 
Theosophy,  55 
Thompson,  Venice,  97 
Thursday  nights,   our,  117, 

122-125, 129, 142, 168, 177, 

223,  255 

"Times,"  London,  43 
Tintoretto,  94,  108 
Tivoli,  66 


Tomson,  Arthur,  202,  211 
Tomson,    Graham.    R.,    157, 

158,  214,  215 
Tonks,  203 
Torcello,  111 
Toulouse-Lautrec,     H.     de, 

240,  280,  291 
Tour  d 'Argent,  Paris,  251, 

252 
Trattoria  Cavour,  Rome,  38, 

43 

Falcone,  37-38,  43 
Posta,  Rome,  36-39,  43 
"Treasure  Island,"  127 
Treteau  de  Tabarin,  Paris, 

284 

Tricycle,  15,  16,  29,  254 
Tudor  classics,  the,  214 

VAL  di  Chiana,  42 
Vale  Press,  213 
Vance,  the  painter,  80 
Van  Dyke,  John,  221 
Van  Gogh,  248,  249 
Vedder,  Elihu,  56-64 
Velasquez,  132, 169, 173,  215 
"Venetian  Life,"  by  W.  D. 

Howells,  109 
Venetian  painting,  101 
Venice,  66,  71-113 
Verlaine,  Paul,  276-277,  281 
Versailles,  266,  267,  269,  270, 

272 

Vesuvius,  67,  69 
Vibrism,  238 
Victoria,  Queen,  62 


Victorian     prejudice,     190, 

199,  202,  204 
"Views  and   Reviews,"  by 

Henley,  141 
Voisin's,  Paris,  246 
"Volpone,"    illustrated    by 

Beardsley,  182,  213 
Vorticists,  248 

"WARES  of  Autolycus,"  158 
Watson,  Marriott,  151,  213- 

215 

Wells,  H.  G.,  148 
Whibley,  Charles,  128,  130, 

151,  213,  227 
Whibley,  Leonard,  213 
Whistler,  James  McNeill,  20, 
91,  93,  94,  95,  100,  102, 
119,    128,   139,    140,   142, 
163,   200,   205,   208,   216, 
218,   220,   221,   236,   237, 
299,  300 
Wilde,  Oscar,  49 
Willes,  Adrian,  172 
Willette,  240,  287 
Willis,  N.  P.,  222 
Wilson,  Edgar,  198 
Worthing,  Henley  at,  126 
"Wounded  Titan,  The,"  126 
"Wrecker,  The,"  165,  249 
"Wrong  Box,  The,"  131 

"YELLOW  Book,  The,"  177, 
184,  185-190,  198 

ZAEHNSDORF,  214 

Zola,  Emile,  47,  215,  222 


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